Joseph's Rose

Joseph had a wonderful wife and she became forever devoted to him. Her name was Tina

Tina loved roses as most women do, but her radiance made the rose look like an unwanted weed. Roses are beautiful , Tina was the rose.

Did you ever really watch a rose bush evolve through its lifetime? The story has similarities to a love affair. The beauty, the sadness, the beginnings, the ending…

First, the flower buds; the most beautiful stage of its growth. The tight petals have stability and can fight off the elements better than any other stage. Love has it’s strength in the beginnings too.

Then the flower matures, the petals spread and open to the sunlight, the fragrance enhances the garden, the other flowers show envy of its beauty. Their love has developed too. The blossoming has developed into the trust and devoted companionship that two people can share in love. Another similarity………..

The mature rose has stood the test of time, but the end had to come in time. You’ve seen it happen all of your life. The rose bush can be nurtured and feed. The beauty can be enjoyed. A lover of roses might sacrifice a flower by pruning it to make room for another blooming beauty. Or, the bush could be neglected, the flower left to discolor and dry out, to hang from the stem and turn to the ugly dead thing that it is. I’ve seen those carcasses left on the bush over the entire winter, standing testimony of the beauty that once was, but is now gone forever.

How do we remember this loving rose? Should we cut her from the stem and take her into our house so she wouldn’t be in any danger from the elements” But that too is only temporary. She’ll wither and die just the same. Her beauty gone forever… like the love shared for the little time they had together.

There are choices to make when trying to save a rose from being lost forever. You can press it between the pages of a book…But then that would lose it’s shape and color, and will fall apart when touched. You can have the flower dried in silica-gel, but again it will be fragile, dry and ugly after a few months, even without the slightest touch.

When my Dad gave my mother a rose for their 25^th anniversary She had it waxed and put into a globe of clear liquid. The rose was preserved completely. It’s petals spread out like the full-blown love they had together. My dad passed away shortly after, but the rose lives on in the globe and in her heart. The fragrance is but a memory, but the beauty will always be there to remember and enjoy.

We will put the rose we knew as Tina into a globe on the mantle of our hearts. We will always remember her as the light of our life, and the woman of our father’s dreams.

Tina never lost her devotion to Joseph even after his passing thirty years ago. Now they can finally be re-united in heaven, where Tina will enhance the garden of our father’s heart once again.

We will remember Tina as the Rose she was, the wife she was, and the Mother she was… with love

We all will miss her very much….

Joseph’s Rose

In Remembrance of Mom

Tina Marie Cobisi Zocco

December 8, 1915

July 3, 2001