White Roses

A Story by Dominic Wolfe

Simple Events can make more difference than you could imagine.

“In my world everything means something and everyone is someone”. I remember the phrase to this day because of something that happened to me a few years ago. As I was walking down the street in the middle of the city, I saw the phrase spray painted on the wall in a gruesomely dark red. I began to think about it and it consumed my mind for the next hour as I wandered from place to place with no destination in mind. I was lost and not geographically speaking as much as emotionally. I was sad and alone and no one was there to comfort me. I couldn’t seem to get a break but as I turned a corner that thought went straight out of my mind.

I saw a young boy, maybe about 14 or 15, who had a sign that said: ‘Need money for flours’. The two things that I noticed first about his sign were that one, obviously, ‘flowers’ was spelled wrong, but two, and more surprisingly, a boy was begging for flowers. I had never seen something so unique as this so I walked up to him and asked him why in the world he was begging for flower money. He wouldn’t talk about it and just kept mumbling about roses and shoving the dirty sign in my face. I wanted to help so bad and so, for a moment, I set my troubles aside and took his hand. I told him we were going to buy some flowers and so he came with me. I took him to a little flower shop a few blocks away and let him pick out the biggest bunch of white roses he could find. I paid for them and we left, walking back to his little spot on the corner. When we got there, he gave me a brief hug and took the few things he had with him and darted off with the flowers. I thought nothing of it except I was glad to help someone.

A few years later, I was reading a book that had been recommended to me as ‘the most emotional book you will ever read’ and I as I flipped open the cover I saw the printed dedication by the author. Instead of the usual ‘Thank you to my mother and father for believing in me’, I saw something that made my head swim and my eyes water. The one little comment said, to me, ‘Thank you to the man who took me from my darkened corner and showed me the way with a bouquet of white roses’. The story was a small autobiography from a man named Marcus Flinn who grew up on the streets and how he turned his life around. The deep moment of his change was when he met a girl who asked for one white rose and got a dozen instead. She helped him turn himself around and he became someone. I won’t ever forget that one rose can make anything be something and anyone become someone.