I am both sorry for your loss and thankful for a peaceful passing. Mary Washington is charming and healthy and has grown well for me without spray for two years. I've got other white roses, but my fragrant white poly seems to take/demand a lot more cutting back. If you've room, Rosa moschata is healthy, repeats well, exotically fragrant and pest free. But it will get big (five feet here.) A smaller grower is Belmont Yellow. Shiny green leaves, palest yellow semidouble blooms. If she loved pale yellow, it would be appropriate (and is no spray, as well.) and is a shorterm, wider grower than Mary Washington. My foundling, Cleveland Cemetery White might also be a consdieration. Mine seems happy to be about 3 1/2 feet tall, a large bouquet shaped rose with palest pink to white rosette like blooms and good fall color. To my nose, no scent. But self deadheading is a good thing that it does.

I don't go on this forum too much as it moves rather slowly, but I saw your post and wanted to express my sympathy about your mother's passing. Unfortunately, we share much in common. My mother was also my best friend, and she died very suddenly, also of a brain hemorhage. She was on vacation with my family and at the end of a busy day, she mentioned feeling a bit tired and would try to have a nap before dinner. She seemed her normal self and mentioned nothing else other than feeling a bit tired. As I was helping her pull back the bedspread and get settled, she just suddenly slumped over and could not be revived by either my DH or myself who both know CPR, or the paramedics when they arrived. Her death was so unexpected as she was only 70, but the only positive feeling I could muster out of it was that it was almost instantaneous and she apparently didn't suffer. However, I can totally relate to your feelings of "what if" and so forth, as I went through the very same thing. I kept thinking that if I had just been suspicious when my mom mentioned she felt a bit tired, I might have known something was odd. However, the doctors assured me that it's almost impossible to survive a massive brain hemorhage even if you are right in a hospital, and I would just have to understand that nothing could have been done, but she died without pain. It has been almost 4 years since I lost my mother and I still miss her terribly. But I can tell you that the raw grief you are going through right now will mellow somewhat over the years. You will not stop missing your mother. But you will be able to think and speak of her without crying all the time, and cherish the happy memories, as opposed to dwelling on her death, which is so common in the first year. My thoughts are with you, and I wanted to pass along something written in one of the sympathy cards I received. It said "A loved one is not really gone unless they are forgotten."

I went into my steamy kitchen where the natural light is fading now but the brightest in the house, cranked up the ISO to 800 and took this one. I shoved all my paint project aside to do it, it is too hot to paint and too humid. You can see that they were not that bad. You can also see that my mother was not the same size as my father, had to fix that and that was by trial and error resizing by percentage until they matched. I took all the color out, (desaturated) then put some back in using color adjustments, same settings for both, that's how I got them to match, tonewise. Then I had to make them a little more contrasty. The problem was when I got the photos and zoomed them up, there were all sorts of little linty, dusty, oddish spots on them in addition to what you can see here. Some of it could have been on the photos or in the photos, from the print process back then, wearing; I don't know. I hate those brownish shadows. I know how to get rid of them, but this is straight out of the camera, no sharpening, straightening or anything. You people here have been the only ones to have anything positive to say about them other than my sister who was delighted with them unless she was being gracious. No, she wants me to retouch one of her daughter's wedding photos, so I know she likes my work. I posted them a couple times elsewhere, and none of the pros had anything to say about them. I do use unconventional methods to get what I want. They would have some long drawn out tutorial, so I just used my intuition and what little I did know about the brushes, etc.

Dot & Jannie ~ sweet stories ~ made me smile! This is the first Mother's Day without my sweet little Mother. One of my last memories of her was last Mothers Day. Mom and Dad went into assisted living a few years ago in Las Vegas where they retired. My Mom started running away after 6 mos or so and they were both moved into memory care at the same facility. Daddy didn't have to go in there but he said he was married to her for 68 years and was not going to leave her. God Bless him. Anyway, my friend and I went to visit for Mother's Day weekend and we were taking them out for brunch at the golf course clubhouse where they used to live (their favorite place.) Mom's dementia had progressed to where she rarely said anything but maybe a word or two now and then....which never really made any sense. As we were driving over there, I was sitting in the backseat with my Mom (who by the way was very tiny, 63 lbs, and NEVER swore ~ I still have a chip in my front tooth from where she backhanded me with her diamond ring when I attemped to swear at a driver who had just cut me off. I was 37 yrs old LOL) I was cuddling her and loving on her and I told her where we were going and asked her if she was going to have something to eat with us? She rarely ate then too. She looked me dead in the eye and *winked* and said " kiss my @ss." OMG my friend and I roared although Dad was a bit upset that she swore. LOL My little mother ~ my little darlin~ I miss her!