I Kept the Roses

I watched a Hallmark movie this week called Time for Him to Come Home. 4th in a series of “Time for someone to come home”. It’s based on a song Blake Shelton and his mom wrote and a book his mom wrote. It’s a nice feel good movie, as all Hallmark ones are. It has a bit of a mystery. It has the very handsome Tyler Haynes with the kind eyes. Kind eyes being the key to being handsome. And it has an adorable Canadian singer named Tenille Townes. She’s singing the title song with the line “Mama called and said it’s time for me to come home.” Bringing tears to the eyes of all of us who wish our mom was still around to call us and say the same. 

Then I found this song of hers. For all of us who know what it’s like to have a broken heart. And what to do with all the things remaining when the one we love is gone. I’ve found people do it differently. Some never change a thing. Some toss everything out the first month. Some, like me, keep a lot, but “give up that bar on the East side of town”, or in my case a tiny house on a tiny ranch because the memories are too painful and the dream has died. A lot of us give up friends, or more accurately they give us up. But I think everyone keeps something. And it’s often surprising what we choose to keep. 

The song is about a love that didn’t work out, but the sentiment of what to save is sometimes the same. 

🎶I tore all the pictures from all of their frames

And all of your T-shirts, I gave them away

I gave up those friends we both hung around

And I gave up that bar on the east side of town

I quit driving by to see if you're home

And I took your dead number right out of my phone

I came to my senses and I gave up drinking alone

But I kept the roses 

Right by my bed

And they should make me lonely 

But I'm smiling instead

'Cause you weren't the one, babe

But you were the closest

I let the rest of us go 

But I kept the roses🎶

I Kept the Roses