FLOWER FRIDAY AND PINKTOBER 2

I can always rely on Mr. HCB to “turn up trumps” as they say - when I mentioned to him late yesterday afternoon that I needed a pink flower for both the Flower Friday and Pinktober challenges, he took me out into the garden and showed me this beautiful rosebud.  

We moved this rosebush last year, and thought we had lost it, but gradually it is coming back to life and we are so pleased, as it was given to us on the occasion of our baptism 14 years ago by two dear friends, Pete and Angie Hack.  Angie has since died, and we were really upset when we thought the rose wouldn’t make it, so when I saw that the bush had quite a few buds, I was delighted.  I was not so happy that it appears to have blackspot and the leaves will have to be destroyed when the bush is pruned, but that can be sorted out.

As well as thinking of  Angie, it brought back to my mind my dear mother-in-law, Joan, who had breast cancer, and how brave she was in the last few years of her life when, in her mid-eighties, she endured several months of chemotherapy, without grumbling or complaining, and in those days, it couldn’t be done in Swindon, but she had to travel to Oxford for this treatment. I remember one day, after she had had it done, and we went to visit her, she called me into the kitchen and asked me if I wanted to see her scar.  Of course, I said I did - and she proudly showed me.  What a wonderful  woman - I will NEVER forget her and miss her so much.

“Out of suffering 
     have emerged the strongest souls; 
          the most massive characters 
               are seared with scars.” 
Kahlil Gibran

Please click on this link so that someone who cannot afford to pay can have a mammogram for free - thank you.