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Wednesday 1 May 2013

Miss Havisham's Roses


On the table before me is a crystal vase filled with fading roses, given to me by my Valentine a couple of weeks ago. There is something about them that prevents me tossing them into the compost heap. Something beautiful about their colours, fading, the edges of the petals going brown and thin and crinkly as paper. I threw a couple out today which were edging towards black. But the majority remain, red and peach coloured, cream and pink.
My Valentine and I have been married now for nearly 37 years. So maybe I see us in these fading roses. Still got some colour, a spark of life. Not yet black and limp. Not yet ready for the compost heap.
I finished re-reading Great Expectations on Sunday morning. It is one of my very favourite books. Miss Havisham and her roses. Fading and yellowing together. Dying incrementally. A testament in her eyes to a love betrayed and never consummated. Something a bit creepy about her deliberate strategy of revenge to be wreaked on the male gender – in the book, on poor innocent Pip.
Poor Miss Havisham, just wanted to be loved.
There is such a deep urge in each one of us to love and to be loved.
I wonder where that comes from, if we all just ‘happened’ into being as a result of a cosmic big bang not underpinned by an intelligence far beyond us.
I think it’s pretty obvious that the basic building block of life is Love.
Don’t you?

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