by Cindy Bird Kastl

Of all the stories that can be told in an old cemetery, I think the ones that touch me the most are the whispers of the mortal ties that I can hear when I see a rose blooming on a long-ago grave.

Several years ago, I had the good fortune to purchase the journals of a young woman who lived near Peoria, Oregon, in the late 1800’s. As I read what she had recorded of her life, and the lives of those around her, I began to feel a need to find her; to learn what became of her. That journey took me to the old Pine Grove Cemetery, east of Peoria.

As my husband and I searched on that early spring day, we came across the grave of a baby of a few months, who had died in 1854. As we examined the tilted stone, I noticed, at the base, what was left of a rose. It had been newly mown along with the grass in the cemetery.

I had been growing old garden roses in my yard for some time, first buying them from specialty nurseries, and then becoming interested in those that would have been grown regionally by our ancestors. My husband and I had begun visiting old home sites and farms to collect cuttings and roots to plant in our own garden.

While I was aware that it had been customary to plant favorite flowers on a loved ones’ grave, and had even run across advertisements in old copies of our local newspaper, telling of nurseries that had planted and tended gravesites, I was touched by this winsome little rose.

Because the grave of this baby and the nearby ones of his parents were quite old, and the rose was untended, I felt comfortable to attend the rose, hoping that we would not offend a family member. We went home, and returned with clippers, stakes and rose food, and set about trying to rejuvenate this remnant of the love someone so long ago had shown for this child. By fall, the rose had put on a lot of healthy new growth, and we felt it was time to allow ourselves to take cuttings. The rose which grew from those cuttings was planted out this spring in our garden. I haven’t been able to identify it yet, but I believe it to be a gallica. We’ve always called it "Newton’s Rose," for Newton McCartney on whose grave it grew.

Newton’s Rose opened a new interest for me. I had grown old roses and other heirloom plants, and had long felt the urgency that these pieces of our heritage needed to be preserved, but I hadn’t recognized the wealth of plant history which is a part of the human history in a cemetery. I have been able to make connections several times between roses represented in old cemeteries and those found along the country roads where homesteads and farms stood, or are still standing. We have found Newton’s Rose at the Sandridge Cemetery, in several places, as well as at the old Parker place, on Parker Road, where it grows along the road with a lovely white moss and two other of its contemporaries. I often have wondered who brought these roses to the valley, and what they called them, but mostly I wonder who carried the roots to the cemeteries to leave for us this reminder of their love for their lost ones, expressed in the living beauty of a flower.

For all of the comfort that seeing the spring blooms brings, there is also a disturbing side. That is, for every rose we find in bloom, we find as many which are sprayed yearly with weed killers. Though they seem to survive, it is just another onslaught to these stalwart remnants which already must survive disease, drought and lack of care. Because in our area the old, once-blooming roses put on blooms in the early spring, they are especially heavily hit by Memorial Day clean-up projects which involve herbicides that distort the leaves and buds, and can damage the plant at a time when they are preparing themselves for a long summer.

We made a recent visit to Pine Grove Cemetery, and the roses there were beautiful. We take comfort to think of these humble bushes carrying their living memorial into the future.