This illustrative piece represents endings--the end of one summer, long ago and the end of life itself.

Meet Rose. She is from a place we all have somewhere within us--somewhere nostalgic where wonderment and merriment reside, where time comes and passes, where we live and die. She stands at the border of magic and reality, and holds in her hand one of the last few of summer's roses. As the leaves fall from the trees to celebrate the coming season, so do the petals on what is left standing in the flower garden. But it is this one particular beauty that Rose chose to pluck, and keep in her memory box. I think it is still there, dried and dusty, like her bones, on the shelf of her great-granddaughter's curio cabinet, next to the urn where she is kept.