A rose blooms.  With depth of beauty representative of all of nature.  Whether red or yellow, the fragrance enchants.  Color does not matter – only purity of exquisite life.  Fragrance to capture the soul of the most forlorn.  Time passes, roses fade.  The memory of the rose grants hope for the next season.  Such is life.

My senior years find days of reflection.  Reflection on the roses of my life.  It is not by chance that the roses have bloomed for me – it seems my destiny was to find the blooming rose, to experience the consuming nature of the beauty, to watch the rose fade with time, to find the enchantment of a new rose.  Roses bloom when life is cultivated, nurtured by compelling irresistible forces.

New roses compare to the old.  One is not better or worse than another.  They are roses – there is nothing greater.

Faded roses leave blessed memories – each with unique beauty and reward, each different, each valued.

I have lost many roses to time and circumstance.  The roses of my life were never meant to endure other than in my memory.  Some experience a single captivating rose.  My experience presents a bouquet.

The pleasure of a bouquet is many times that of a single rose – but each rose must ultimately fade – and the fading bouquet is as many times more painful.

Every vine of my life ultimately produced roses.  And roses always fade.  Would I have had a single rose to accompany my life, would the enduring quality of the single beauty have sustained my wishes?  Would my life have been a single vine?  I cannot say.  Would I trade my bouquet of faded roses?  Would I trade any of the individual roses in my bouquet?

Never.