The Rose That Never Was

Photo Credit: matt_brock

Photo Credit: js_almada

Before the death of Emily Grierson I was able to sit down and talk to her. I had been talking to Emily for about 3 years so I had come to know her very well. Now when I first met Emily she was 71 and in a really terrible state of mind at the time, I was very surprised that she let me talk to her for as long as I did. She was very paranoid with everything around her but I believe she let me into her life because I reminded her so much of her dad who she loved dearly. As we all later learned Emily never buried her dad. He was laid up in the upstairs bedroom decaying. But why would she not give him the proper burial? From what she indicated to me was she couldn’t let her dad go. Once the townspeople started to come after her about not having to pay taxes she had no idea what to do. For years her dad had done everything for her, she didn’t have a job that paid enough to pay the taxes, she had no idea how to pay taxes, so I believe that the pressure finally got to her.

After her father's passing she met a man named Homer Barron. To her Homer was the start of something new. After the people of the town were frowning upon the relationship she was having with Homer. The wedding that she planned on having started to become less likely everyday. She began to stay inside. Not talking to people can make anyone go crazy especially someone as vulnerable as Emily was at the time. When the Minister of the town decided that something was seriously going wrong with Emily he paid her a visit to her house. From what I have heard from folks that lived in the town there was a bad odor coming from the upstairs. He supposedly snuck upstairs to find Emily’s father in a decaying state. Now people had seen Homer go into the house the day before the minister came to pay Emily a visit but no one ever saw him leave. Emily had bought some arsenic (which is a very strong poison) to supposedly kill rats. The Minister had said something about Emily using the arsenic to kill Homer, but why would she do that? He was the love of her life. No one believed him at the time, so he swore not to tell anyone of what he saw.

After she died and sometime was passed I was allowed to go see the sealed upstairs room for myself. It was very scary, the way the room was set up was like a time capsule everything was old and looked like it hadn’t been touch in about 30 years. Homer was laid across the bed with a suit on like he was going to a wedding and a long strand of Emily’s hair next to him. I believe that Emily thought that she was bound to lose Homer at some point in time and the only way to make sure she didn’t was to kill him and pretend like he was still alive. The mind of Emily had been messed up since she was little and from the information we have on Emily’s autopsy she was said to have a multiple personality disorder. Which would explain a lot when it came to the decisions that she was making and why she did what she did. I wished that I could have started talking to Emily a lot sooner in her life so I could have helped her but since she was at such an old age and at the most intense stage of her disease I wasn’t much help to her.