Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
It came, a flower bright,
Amid the cold of winter
When half-gone was the night.

I have always loved this Christmas carol. Years ago, I sang with an a cappella group, and singing this piece—accompanied only by a plaintive violin in a candlelit church on Christmas Eve—remains one of my most cherished memories.

Shortly after my mother died in October, a group of my womyn friends gave me a small potted rose bush to commemorate her. It wasn’t much to look at—no buds, a few wilted leaves, weary from transport and neglect. But there it was nonetheless. A living thing. A promise.

I set it outside. It got plenty of water—maybe too much—because it was rainy season here in the Panama cloud forest. Mostly, I ignored it.

Those early weeks after death are strange—busy and hollow at the same time. There were arrangements to make, people to call, receptions to organize. Grief lived mostly in the background then, muffled by logistics.

A few days before Christmas, after I returned from North Carolina—from my mother’s memorial service and the whirlwind family reunion that followed—I came home to Panama. Back to the mountain. Back to quiet. Back to myself.

The rose had put out one small bud that wobbled on the end of a thin, spindly stem. Each day it changed slightly, gathering itself.

On Christmas Eve, it opened.love opening

Delicate. Pale yellow at the center, edged with deep fuchsia pink. Elegant and restrained, like it had taken its time deciding whether this was the moment.

On Christmas morning, it opened exuberantly. When I leaned in close, it released a soft, old-fashioned rose scent. The kind that feels borrowed from another era.The kind I remember my mother wearing. Love is a rose

They say the olfactory sense is the strongest carrier of memory.

I knew.

It was my mother coming to say hello. To say, I’m still around. To say, I’m still here.
Still loving you.

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.”
—Albert Einstein

Grief makes room for things we might otherwise dismiss. In the days that followed, I continued to feel her nearby—watching, present, being. It was deeply comforting.

And then the bloom burst and slowly began to shed its petals.

She was gone again.

Author’s Note: This piece is part of Behind the Scenes, where I write about life, Panama, and the stories that shape us—often quietly, often unexpectedly.