Ad astra per aspera

Ad astra per aspera is the inscription on the memorial bench in Anna’s rooftop garden, where it gives a phrase of endurance a specific family history. The garden was created after her mother’s death, and the bench was added after her father suffered a stroke; years later, Anna’s encounter with another memorial bench in the park brings that history back into view.

Inscription and Setting

The rooftop garden was Ed’s idea, conceived four years earlier after Anna’s mother died. He thought Anna needed a project, and they made the roof into a garden with flower beds, a vegetable patch, and miniature boxwoods. Its centerpiece was an arched trellis, six feet wide and twelve feet long, which became a leafy, shady tunnel in spring and summer.

After Anna’s father had a stroke, Ed placed a memorial bench beneath the trellis. Its inscription reads, “Ad astra per aspera,” translated in the narrative as “Through adversity to the stars.” The words therefore belong not to an abstract motto but to a garden shaped by loss and to a bench set within a place Anna had once used for quiet evenings of reading and drinking a glass.

The Garden’s Changed State

The garden’s remembered fullness contrasts with its later neglect. When Anna has scarcely thought of the roof garden, she asks David whether he can see anything above; he describes it as a jungle. He confirms that it is totally overgrown, like a forest. The once-tended garden and shaded trellis have become difficult to recognize, while the bench and its inscription remain part of Anna’s recollection of the place.

The Park Bench and Recollection

Later, as Anna crosses the park to try to help a woman she has met only twice, her umbrella catches on a bench and stops her. She recognizes it as the park’s only bench: a shabby wooden seat with curlicue arms and an in-memoriam plaque. The interruption turns her attention to a remembered scene of Ed and Olivia sitting there, reading separately before swapping books, as Anna watched from the house.

The park bench is distinct from the memorial bench in the rooftop garden, and the account does not give its plaque the same inscription. Its importance to the expression lies instead in the way the caught umbrella and the sight of another memorial bench trigger Anna’s recollection. The phrase remains attached to the roof garden and the family losses that shaped it; the park scene extends the pattern of memory through another bench associated with remembrance and with Ed and Olivia.