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Wednesday, June 30 2004, 9.35 P.M.

Late today, I drove up my driveway returning from a final visit with Rose, my youngest daughter, during the past two days at the hospital.  She had paid a visit to my home on Father’s day barely ten days ago.  To adapt from a classic writing, Rose’s visit to her father’s home was the best of times; my visit to Rose at the hospital was the worst of times.  But maybe this is a selfish or shortsighted application of another’s words.

Rose, as usual on Father’s day, had arrived before others to clean her father’s home and to help in any way she could to make the family gathering a success.  I did not need to ask her for help.  She knew she was wanted and needed.  Rose was a lover of all in many different ways and knew how to respond unhesitatingly and with passion.  Her sensitivity towards others was one of her greatest strengths more than compensating for her academic shortcomings.  She recognized the latter, regretfully sometimes, but took no particular note of her innate care and concern for others.  Rose helped because she loved, not because she needed to be loved.

Rose’s visit on Father’s day was the last in which I experienced physical help and a hug from her.  But it was not the last time she expressed her love for me as well as others.  Several days before her life was taken as an innocent passenger by a careless driver, I received a "Thinking of You" greeting card.  Inside she penned, "It’s so nice to get mail if it’s not a bill.  ;-)  Love, Rose"  I will  treasure her last words to me until the day I join her.

I visited Rose in the hospital the past two days to love, not to be loved.  I held and kissed her hand many times in the all too brief, last meeting in this life.   Rose continued to exist only because she had expressed a desire to help others, even in her present state of helplessness.

Another said it far better, "Because of Rose’s love for people and her giving nature, she will be blessing many others with her gift of organ and tissue donation."  Yes, her days of helping the hungry in the food pantry, working with disabled children, comforting the dying in a hospice program, working at the local care center for the elderly, and completing only half her studies towards becoming a R.N. have ended.

But Rose’s body lives on in others as does her example and her spirit is in her heavenly Father’s home which has no need of cleaning or other mundane chores.

Love, Dad

Postscript:  December 31, 2007.  This holiday season, I have again been in touch with Rose  at least indirectly through a woman in West Virginia in which Rose’s heart, far from Wisconsin, continues to beat, and care, and love.  Hopefully, one day I will touch the hand that has the pulse of Rose’s beating heart.