The Insistence of a Rose , a Small Vase and Some Water

She looked down at the floor and fiddled with her collar button.
"My cousin is in the hospital." She said finally.
"She's ninety and she's not doing very well."
She got up and went into the bathroom. She came back out with two plastic curlers in her bangs and began putting on a gold leaf pin.
"I'm going to go visit her. Maybe for the last time."
It wasn't the season for sadness: spring was calling the flowers into bloom and the sound of birds singing came through the open windows.
"Why don't you bring her a rose?" I asked. The climbing rose bush next to the front door was laden with powder pink roses.
She shook her head and touched her collar button again.
"No, its not worth it, she won't even notice."
I remembered I had a small portable vase with a waterproof, rubber lid from a bouquet given to me at my marriage. It was a beautiful bunch of spring wildflowers. Yes, it was there, behind the silverware. I filled it with water and grabbed the heavy silver pruning sheers with curved toucan beak blades and started to walk downstairs. But the vase leaked water onto my thumb. There was a hole in the bottom. I had saved another. This one didn't leak. I laid out the portable vase filled with water, and the shears on the downstairs counter and said to her:
"All you need to do is cut the rose you like."
I was folding laundry when she passed the doorway. A pale rose was sticking out of her black patent leather purse.
When she returned from the hospital her eyes were all sparkly blue and she took my forearm with her hand.
"I don't think my cousin saw the rose, but the family was so touched by it. They said it was the most beautiful flower they had ever seen. Everyone, even the nurses coming in and out of the hospital room, noticed that rose."
A week later I was out jogging when she got the phone call that her cousin had passed away. When I finished my neighborhood loop, up the street, sprinting to the front door, she was oddly standing there in her white terrycloth robe, holding her black cane, admiring the rose bush.
She had watery eyes. I was out of breath. She urged me inside. The still air in the house made me sweat profusely.
"I got a phone call this morning. It was the family. They want me to bring a rose to the funeral. They want her to be buried holding a rose from the same rose bush. That rose that I brought lasted eight days-"
I felt a tear roll and mingle with the perspiration on my hot cheek-"That rose that I brought lasted eight days," she continued, "in just that little bit of water."