Posted by Lisa Laree to Catching the Mosquito
It was August 31, 1997.
I remember we were heading out of the kitchen door through the garage to load up in the minivan and go to church. I was carrying the one-year-old, following the older kids. My Sweet Babboo picked up the Sunday paper from the yard, rolled the rubber band off of it and glanced at the headline.
"Diana dead at thirty-six," he read in a shocked voice.
"What???" I stopped in my tracks and turned around.
"She was in a car wreck," he explained as he set the paper on the top step in front of the kitchen door and followed me out of the garage. "Reporters and photographers were chasing her car and they crashed."
I felt incredibly sad for someone who lived on the other side of the world and had nothing to do with me. "So that's what happened to Cinderella, " I commented. "She was hounded to death by the paparazzi."
The whole world was shocked. I watched the news, as did everyone...the tributes, the flowers, the grief.
A British goods store in town announced that they were collecting condolences in a book and had it available for anyone to go down and sign.
I wrestled with the idea, but a bit of poetry occurred to me, inspired by the mound of flowers in the news. I scribbled it down, went over it a time or two, then loaded the preschool kids into the van and went in search of the store with only a knowledge of the street it was on.
I found the store; the book was on a low table. There may have been a short line; my memory fails me there. But I do remember that I crouched down to write and, with a four year old impatiently at my side and a 14- month old balanced on my knee, scribbled my verse into the margins of the book. Why the margin? I still don't know. Unless I was trying to leave room for other folks to sign.
Did anyone ever read it? Doubtful. Given the squirming kids I was dealing with, and my marginal scribbling, I'm not even sure it was legible. But I thought about it earlier this week and decided today would be a good day to share it.
To an English Rose
All the flowers in
Great Britain
Lie piled in the
street,
Bearing silent
witness
To the passing
mourners’ feet.
Placed in solemn
tribute
The bouquet yet still
grows
To honor and remember
A single English
Rose.
That Rose’s
fragrance, wafted deep
Within her nation’s
heart
And spread throughout
all the world,
Should not so soon
depart.
So let us give our
flowers
And sing a mourner’s
song.
Oh, let all the
blossoms weep with us—
The English Rose is
gone.
