Roses and Mother's Day

It was Mothers Day some time in the early 1950s and we were picking roses to wear to church.  It was traditional to wear a red rose for your mother.  As we were picking the roses to pin on our lapels we only picked 3 red roses and a white rose.  My grandmother, Lillie Maud Porter, and my mother, Beverly Lewis and I wore the pretty red roses we had picked, but my great grandmother, Viola May Jones wore a white rose.  I asked her why her rose was white and she told me that it was because her mother was no longer alive.  As a child I let it go at that, realizing that she was old and that her mother would have been very old so it made sense to me that she was no longer alive.  It was not until I did some research into my ancestry that I found out that she had lost her mother at a very young age.  Gram as I called my great grandmother lost her mother when she was a very young child and grew up with her older sister as a substitute mother and the main female influence in her youth.  I was blessed to have the loving early upbringing of my wonderful mother, grandmother, and great grandmother all living together in an extended family unit. This mothers day I will wear a white rose near my heart for those I have lost.  I can only hope that I have been as good a mother as these wonderful ladies.