Grandmother is terribly old. She has white, white hair and her face is filled with wrinkles; yet her eyes sparkle like two stars and are even more beautiful, for when you look in them, they are so gentle and filled with love. She wears a long dress with flowers printed on it. It is made of silk and rustles when she walks; and she can tell so many stories. Grandmother knows more than Father and Mother do, that is certain, because she has lived so much longer. Grandmother's hymnbook has a silver clasp to close it, and she reads in it often. Between two of the pages of the book lies a rose; it is pressed and dry and not nearly as pretty to look at as the roses that stand in a vase on the table in her room. Yet Grandmother smiles more kindly toward it than toward the fresh roses; and sometimes the sight of it will bring tears into her eyes.
Why do you think that Grandmother looks with such fondness at the pressed rose in the old book? Do you know why? Every time that a tear falls from Grandmother's eyes down upon the wizened rose, it regains its color and freshness and the whole room is filled with its fragrance. The walls of her room disappear as the morning mist and, instead, she is in the middle of a forest and the sun is shining down through the green leaves. Grandmother has become a girl again, with yellow hair and red cheeks: lovely and young, like a flowering rose. But her eyes, her gentle loving eyes, they are the same, they are still Grandmother's. Beside her sits a young and a handsome man; he plucks the rose and hands it to her and she smiles. No, that smile is not Grandmother's.—Oh, but it is! He is gone. Many thoughts, many persons pass by in the green forest, but at last they all disappear as the young man did. The rose is back in the hymnbook and Grandmother is again an old woman, sitting looking at the withered rose in the book.
Now Grandmother is dead. She sat in her easy chair and had just finished telling a long, long story. "That is the end of it, she said. "Now I think I am tired, let me sleep a litte." She leaned back in the chair, closed her eyes, and breathed ever so softly. The room grew quieter and quieter; her face looked so peaceful, so happy, as though the sun were shining on it. Then they said that she had died.
She was put into a black coffin; there she lay wrapped in white linen. She looked beautiful even though her eyes were closed. All the wrinkles were gone, and on her lips was a smile. She looked so dignified with her silver-white hair, and not frightening at all. She was our sweet, good grandmother. The hymnbook was put under her head, as she had wanted it to be, and in the old book lay the rose. Then Grandmother was buried.
On her grave, close to the wall of the churchyard, was planted a rose tree; and every year it bloomed, and the nightingale sat on its branches and sang. From inside the church came the sound of the organ, playing the hymns that were printed in the book, upon which the dead woman's head rested. The moon shone down upon the grave; but the dead are not there. Any child could come, even at midnight, and pluck a rose from the tree. The dead know more than we living do; they know our fear of ghosts and, being kinder than we are, they would never come to frighten us. There is earth inside as well as above the coffin. The hymnbook and the rose, which was the keeper of so many memories, have become dust. But up on the earth new roses bloom and there the nightingale sings; and inside the church the organ plays. And there are those who remember old Grandmother with the sweet, eternally young eyes. Eyes cannot die! And ours shall see her once again, young and beautiful as she was the first time that she kissed the fresh, newly plucked rose that now is dust in the grave.
– Grandmother, by Hans Christian Andersen
