My grandmother has always loved flowers, and roses had recently become a favourite in our family. When I visited her in September 2025, she was living in a retirement home and receiving high-intensity care, facing the difficult final chapter of her life.
I painted her a rose in her favourite colour, bright neon pink. Not only as a gift, but in the hope that its vividness might still reach her through her failing eyesight. She loved the painting, although her first words were, “Is it a man’s face?” — a moment that was both funny and quietly heartbreaking.
For me, the rose became a small gesture of love against the inevitability of time: bright, fragile and beautiful, even with the thorns.