The old woman was close to death. She had seen his face the night before as she lay in bed. It was a face with sunken eyes and a cold, lifeless stare. It beckoned her with a fierce grin, but she was not afraid. In her sleep he was silent. Death did not say a word. He only stared at her and opened his dark jaws for her to enter.

She awoke the next day and could barely remember her dream. She often had dreams even in her old age. With the coming of age her dreams were more vivid than in her youth, but upon awakening she quickly forgot them. While she was dreaming they were so real, but in the mornings they were filed away into the layers of the unspoken experiences which make up the world of the spirit.

The nurse entered and drew open the shades.

"How are you today, Miss Anna?"

Although she was well into her eighty-fourth year, all the staff at the nursing home called her "Miss Anna." In part it was a sign of respect and reflected a genuine warmth that emanated from the nurses to the patients. While no one would ever use the word "patient" in a nursing home, everyone knew that those who resided there were ill. Their illnesses were connected to their age and their age brought with it their illnesses. They were all sick in one way or another. Some had rheumatism, others had hearts which had grown weary and others had even begun to forget who they were. They were all on medications of one sort or another. The pills would be dispensed with regular frequency and on a consistent schedule.

"Miss Anna, how are you today?"

Miss Anna never responded with anything more than a smile. It was a gentle, soft smile. The ones you see on Madonna paintings of the Renaissance. It was a smile of recognition. A smile the Mona Lisa would have envied.

The morning light filtered through the windows of the late march day. Soon Ester would come.

The nurse opened the window just a bit for the fresh wind of the outside air to enter the room. "Uh.. huh.. seems a bit chilly today," muttered the nurse continuing her monologue. "I guess spring just ain't about ready to come."

Miss Anna's smile did not change as the fresh air caressed her face and added new life to the smell of decay. The nurse knew Miss Anna was dying. It was on all the charts. The doctors had given her no more than three weeks to live and others at the home who lived daily with death said it was even more imminent.

The family had all been notified that the end was near and they had already adjusted their schedules in anticipation of the final notice.

The nurses had seen these cases before and they all were so very much alike. She

tried to distance herself from the idea of death and dying and found that her best approach was to create a sense of illusion.

"Why is it, miss Anna, that every time I see you, you is looking a day younger?"

She got no response for her lie and did not expect one. in a few minutes she tidied up the room and quietly took her leave.

A few minutes later an orderly came into the room to give Miss Anna some pills and took her blood pressure. The pills were diuretics to help relieve the buildup of water in the body and the blood pressure registered low as normal. Later breakfast was brought in on a tray which resembled a meal served on a flight to the moon. The food was tasteless and pureed and had to be fed by spoon to the dying woman.

Around her the illusion of spring and life was being painted in cheerful greetings and pastel smiles with the added insult that she was being treated not as a grown-up but as a child.

Her life had come full circle, she knew that well, but the passing years should have brought with them a reverence and respect for age. Yet, in the confines of her eight decades of life, she resented that now she was being treated as a child in a nursery.

She knew she was not looking younger day by day and she knew when she was being patronized, but she was too weak to utter a protest or complaint.

Left alone for a second time, she saw a ghostlike figure standing in the doorway. It spoke not a word but just stood there. It neither frowned nor smiled, but just stared and beckoned. Its eyes were lifeless and penetrating. The same eyes and face which had appeared in her dream. She stared the figure right back gathering in her aged, dying body all the strength it could muster. She was not about ready to give up her spirit and her body held on fast to her soul forbidding to give it leave.

The shadowy figure did not move. It had stood by many a door at the nursing home and was a frequent and regular visitor. Why just yesterday he came to take home an old man who had lived down the hall. The man had been suffering for months from the affects of a cerebral stroke surrounded by machines and tables layered with medicines. The man too was a fighter. His body too had not been willing to yield its soul to such an unwelcomed guest. But death is sly and sneaky and moves with silent stealth. In a moment when the man had least expected it, the shadowy figure with its penetrating eyes extinguished the candles that lay on the bureau at the foot of the bed. Early the next day the body was covered, a prayer was uttered and the man was removed from the home.

The ghostlike figure was now hovering around Miss Anna's door and even penetrated the private chambers of her dreams. It was an unwelcomed guest intimidating her in the season of spring.

Easter was only two weeks away. It was late this year coming at the end of April. Although it was already the season when flowers were breaking through the earth and trees were slowly coming to life and full bloom, the weather was still cold and windy and winter just wasn't ready to let go her grip over the land.

Miss Anna's daughter often came to pay her a visit. Usually on the weekend when she could spare the time to get away from her own household chores. The daughter was a woman in her late fifties and the mother of two children of hers own.

She often came in the late morning or early afternoons and stayed for several hours until supper. Whenever she was there the figure of death would disappear. She would bring with her laughter and smiles which were incompatible with the ominous presence of death. The sound of laughter intimidated death and a human smile would send forth beams of radiation and beacons of light to cast his darkness deep into obscurity.

When Miss Anna's daughter walked in that afternoon the lunch trays had already been collected. She walked over to where her mother lay on the bed and noticed a pained smile cross over her mother's face. It was a smile which curved up ever so slightly at the edge of the lips and with the greatest effort and stayed for a wile in that fixed position.

"How are you today, mamma?" Her greeting was always the same and the silence which followed was predictable.

"Would you like to go for a walk?"

The so called "walk" her daughter suggested was no more than a ten minute ride in a wheel chair up and down the halls of the nursing home. In truth, miss Anna was no longer able to walk by herself. Her legs were unable to support her frail body withered by age. The irony was that in her youth she was fond of long walks and would think nothing of walking long distances to save a dime at a rummage sale. She loved walking and never tired of fatigue from spending a whole day passing up and down the avenues and streets which crisscrossed her old neighborhood. But, that was years ago. With the passing of time and the waning of the years, he body weakened and her legs lost their power to carry the weight of her body.

When she had first entered the home she used a walker which she despised.

"This thing makes me feel like a baby," she once protested. Then one day she fell and broke her hip. Her bones had become so brittle that the slightest fall caused a fracture. A pin was placed in her hip to connect her joints but she was never again able to walk.

Every day the attendants at the home would lift her from her bed and place her in a chair next to the television. She stared at the screen less than half-interested in the images projected on the video tube and annoyed by the neurotic sounds of canned laughter she became disinterested. After a few hours the orderlies came around to each of the rooms and placed her back into bed.

Whenever her daughter did come she would be taken for a "walk" lasting no more than fifteen minutes. Together they bypassed the lobby and the reception desk.

Down the corridor was a common sitting room which she found to be noisy, yet the two of them went there to watch and stare at the people entering or leaving the home.

Miss Anna never spoke much on these occasions but her fragile smile which accompanied her mood on these trips indicated that she was glad to have a companion and to be out of her room.

"Come on. Let's go for our walk." He daughter gently urged.

A nurse entered and helped Debra hoist her mother into the wheel chair.

"There we go now. Upsy-daisy."

Miss Anna's smile grew broader as she felt like a child being taken out for a first walk. As much as she resented being treated as a child, she was equally amused that she was catered to as one. Life had moved full cycle.

"It's a might bit chilly today," murmured Debra half to herself. "I was hoping we could go outside a bit around the grounds, but I guess we'll just have to stay inside today."

Whenever the weather permitted, Debra took her mother outside to smell the fresh air, but she hadn't done so since late October. Miss Anna loved to watch the foliage on the trees near the river behind the buildings. There were maples and oaks and together they mixed with the intermittent birches giving off a burst of color in reds, browns and gold which were beautiful in a quiet way. Whenever the leaves fell silently to the ground, they would create a soft carpet which covered the earth in a solemn silence, like a shroud putting nature to sleep.

Chipmunks and squirrels ran up and down the trees with their captured oaks and acorn nuts saving them for the winter which was sure to come.

On this one day there was a chill in the air which frosted the panes and a blowing wind which howled like an omen as it beat against the windows. Debra wrapped a woolen shawl around her mother's shoulders. It was a shawl which Miss Anna had knit for herself years ago when her hands were still agile and not twisted with the thorns of arthritis. Together they walked out into the corridor.

An attendant nurse passed by her and warned. "It's a bit too chilly to take her out today. I think you should just keep her in the lobby near the TV."

Debra nodded and agreed it was best and guided the wheel chair down the hall to the sitting room where most others at the home sat staring each locked into his own silence.

"I want to see the flowers."

Miss Anna spoke these words in a voice which was barely audible. The flowers had just begun to sprout from the ground and some of the perennials were beginning to bloom, their green stems tapering into colored buds ready to burst into the spring air.

"It's too cold to go out. The wind is blowing. I'll take you out tomorrow, or the day after as soon as the weather warms up a bit."

"It's o.k. I just want to see the flowers."

Her voice had no determination but her request was persistent. After eighty years of wants and desires she wished now only to see the flowers with their simple silent beauty. It made no difference if they were not yet formed or fully in bloom. It was the mystery of their eternal power to be reborn which drew her to see them just once more.

The wind continued to rattle the panes and Debra walked over to look at the buds beneath the window. The buds were young sprouts of crocuses which had pushed their way through the soil and behind them a row of tulips and hyacinths were beginning to come to life.

She walked back to her mother sitting lifeless in the wheelchair with only a thin smile on her face. She too was like a lower, a withering flower whose blush had lost its bloom. She looked pleadingly at her daughter and begged.

"Please take me outside. I just wanted to see the flowers."

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