"...a rose e're blooming...."

For more than a month, three small buds remained on the sprawling old rose bush in my back yard.

I wondered whether these buds would ever bloom. I had been surprised to find them alone and clustered together on a sprig extending from one of the major branches of the bush after a spell of cold weather ended in early October.

In the spring, this same bush had exploded with hundreds of blooms. After all of the blooms had fallen in June, I pruned the bush like I do every summer, hoping for another blossoming perhaps before the fall. But none occurred.

All through October I watched those three buds and waited. The buds remained tight with just a hint of red color hiding under their green leafing.

Last Wednesday, on November 11, my wife told me that one of the buds had bloomed (see picture). Karol was excited, because, you see, that day, and this old rose bush, have an extremely special meaning for us.

Seven years ago, our son, Aaron Francis Dougherty, was shot to death in our house. He had been profoundly depressed and had called the police to our house in an act that I can only conceive of as madness. When the police ordered him to drop his knives that he held in his hands, he ignored them. Seconds later, two police officers shot him eight times, thinking that he was advancing on them. I witnessed this horrific event. I saw that he never moved. He was just 26 years old, barely a man.

That night, as we washed the blood from our dining room floor, we did not know what to do with the bloodied water in our washpan. Then Karol said we should empty the pan in the rose garden. Which is what we did on that night of the day he had been shot: November 11, 2002.

Before that day, for the fifteen years we had lived in this house at that time, this bush bloomed only once each season. Beginning in 2003, the bush bloomed in the spring and in the fall.

This year I waited and watched and, finally, witnessed the second blooming again. This time there was only a single lonely bud, but on the single most meaningful day I could hope for this bush to bloom. I was reminded of my son, a rose before blooming.

It was a beautiful day, and a gorgeous memory.