My mother also loved roses and birds.  She must have planted more than thirty roses of all different hues and fragrances around the perimeter of our home.  The smell of roses in the air would almost knock you over on a lovely spring morning.  In a way, the rose, could actually be an analogy for my mother.  She could be very beautiful and engaging on the outside, but she definitely had her thorny side. I think she loved birds because they were free to spread their wings and she always felt tied to her responsibilities.

In June of 2002, Mom became ill at the nursing facility where she was being rehabilitated from a recent hospital stay.  They rushed her to emergency at the nearby hospital.  When I got there she was being her worst prickly self, acting rudely to the hospital staff as well as to my sister and me.  I decided to give her some space and let her cool down before I went back to visit her the next day.  I didn’t even know what room they had put her in, so I had to call the hospital to find her.  After seeing the condition she was in, I felt really bad that I had not come sooner.  I spent the next two days over the weekend by her side in her room because the nurses seemed to have abandoned her.  By Monday, she was being quarantined and her vital signs were slipping.  After the last three years on and off in several different hospitals when I didn’t think she would survive, this was the one time I thought that she would be back in the nursing home recuperating.  It had been a painful journey for both of us and now it looked like it was coming to an end.  The nurse suggested I find a hospice to help ease my mother’s last hours in a more pain-free state.  I opted for the one within the hospital to cut down on moving her too much as she was in extreme pain.  With my husband at my side, we walked by my mother as they wheeled her bed downstairs to the last room she would ever see.  The birds outside the windows were singing especially loud and I watched Mom try to turn her head to see them. As we entered the hospice, the nurse informed us that Mom’s room was ready. My husband and I looked at each other and smiled.  Somehow my mother had intuitively known that the last day of her life would be spent in room number “five” also known as the “rose” room at 5555 W. Thunderbird Road.