*Indicates names that have been changed

A few years ago, Mother was forced to say goodbye to her best friend Lucy.* Lucy, a rambunctious yet uniquely fun-spirited nurse who loved white roses, Coors Light, and Elvis Presley, died at the early age of thirty-nine. Some people, including Mother, believe that Lucy was murdered.

Just before her death, Lucy and her husband Luke* had been having marital problems. When Lucy was admitted to the hospital due to severe headaches, Luke remained at Lucy’s side, yet he behaved oddly. Though he wasn’t in the medical field himself, he repeatedly tried to persuade the nurses let him administer injections and other medication to Lucy. At one point, he even requested that they allow him to inject Lucy with a drug that he’d brought in. Of course, the nurses refused.

After Lucy had spent several days in the hospital under meticulous medical care and observation, she began sitting up in bed, talking, and even saying she was feeling better. And all indications were that she was getting better. Then one day, for just a few minutes, Luke was left alone with Lucy. Almost immediately afterward, Lucy started having severe headaches and began losing her ability to speak. Further tests revealed that she had developed a brain hemorrhage. Soon, she slipped into a coma, and shortly thereafter, she died. The coroners report listed the cause of death as unknown.

A few days after Lucy was buried, Mother went to visit her grave. The grave was covered in fresh flowers. Several of them were white roses, just like Lucy had always loved.

Grief-stricken as well as confused about Lucy’s sudden death, Mother found herself crying over Lucy’s grave and asking "Why?" And as she stood there, she was suddenly overcome with the inexplicable urge to take one of the white roses. At the time, she assumed that urge was a sentimental one that came from her feelings of deep sadness and loss.

But perhaps it was caused by something more…

Mother took the rose home with her. Her husband R.L. cut away most of the stem and put the top of the flower into a jar, which he filled with a preservative substance to prevent the rosebud from ever wilting. Mother placed the preserved rose on top of the VCR in their bedroom.

One afternoon about two weeks later, Mother was home alone cleaning in the same bedroom. Suddenly, she heard the faint, tinkling notes of what sounded like a music box. There were no lyrics, but the tune playing was Elvis Presley’s "Love Me Tender," one of Lucy’s favorites. All televisions and radios in the house were off, and all windows were closed, so Mother had no idea where the music could be coming from. She followed the sound and was shocked to discover that it seemed to come from the VCR, where the rose was sitting. But before she could investigate further, the music stopped.

When R.L. got home from work and Mother told him what she’d heard, he laughed at her. He was sure that such an impossible story had a logical explanation, and he wouldn’t believe any of it. But Mother heard the same music again and again during the afternoons that followed, at approximately the same time each day. After a week, R.L. at last became convinced when the soft, musical strains awakened them both at around three a.m. one morning. It was the first time that Mother heard the music play at any time other than mid-afternoon, and it was the first time anyone else had heard it. And that time, instead of hearing just a few brief chords of the song, as Mother had before, both of them heard the notes of the entire song.

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