Rose Lucille Flood

Rose Flood loved the sun.

She loved dark chocolate and English breakfast tea and -- back in the decades when she was a smoker -- that first cigarette in the morning.

She loved knitting. She loved her dog, Mickey.

Most of all she loved her family. She loved her children, Linda and Joe; she loved the people they married, Jimmy and Kyoko; she loved the grandchildren they brought her, Ema and Sean.

And Rose was loved -- with passion by her family, with loyalty by her friends, with the kindled warmth of the people she met in the grocery store or at work or in the diner or my god in a parking lot. All the people she turned from strangers to allies with her smile, her sing-song voice, and a gentle touch of her fingers on their arms.

Was ever a life so defined by love, given and received with grace, with power, and with such a bottomless generosity? If we have lived among angels, Rose was one of them.

Rose Monte, the first child of Rose and Michael Monte, was born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 18, 1941. She died of breast cancer on May 4, 2020, in Union Beach, New Jersey. She was 79.

The facts of her life went like this: as a toddler, she survived pneumonia. When she was 14, her family -- now with her little brother Michael -- moved to East Islip, New York, where she met her lifelong best friend, Gerry Infante.

She left high school and became a hairdresser. She married Roger Coleman in September 1962 and they had two children. They divorced a few years later, and she and her children lived in  several towns on Long Island until she married James Flood in 1971 and they settled in East Islip. Eventually, they moved to Florida, where she lived for many years.

She had a dozen jobs over her lifetime -- cutting hair, mixing drinks, showing people to their tables. That was how she taught her children to survive: by their own sweat.

"There's only one way to make money," she once told her son. "Work for it."

If Rose was an angel, she wasn't a saint. Her fuse could be short, especially those years when the money was scarce, the work was hard, and the kids were loud. If she had something to say, she said it.

But the years were also sweet: in photo albums, her sun-tanned face moves through them, smiling and pretty, her chin strong, her eyes dark and warm.

Her second husband James died in 2003 and she adjusted to life on her own in Florida, with her own house and her own car. She had friends, she had hobbies, and she had the warm southern sun.

In 2014, suffering from the first stages of dementia, she moved north to live with her daughter Linda and her son-in-law Jimmy Wilson. Her memory loss progressed, but she never forgot the names of her family and friends or how much she loved them. She never forgot how to charm the servers and shopkeepers and hairdressers she met over the years.

Even a cancer diagnosis this year failed to sap her spirit. Less than a week before she died, she assured her grandchildren on a video chat that she wasn't hurting.

"I feel pretty good," she told them.

                ===

Rose Flood is survived by her brother, Michael Monte; her children, Linda Wilson and Joseph Coleman; her grandchildren, Ema and Sean Coleman; her son-in-law, James Wilson; and her daughter-in-law, Kyoko Ichikawa.

Arrangements were entrusted to the Shore Point Funeral Home and Cremation Services, Inc., 3269 State Highway/Route 35 North, Hazlet, New Jersey 07730.  In respect of Rose's wishes, he will be privately cremated. A memorial service will be announced at a later date. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, friends of Rose consider a donation to the Breast Cancer Research Fund or other organizations dedicated to fighting this disease. For information or to send condolences to the family, please visit, www.shorepointfh.com.

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Rose Lucille Flood, please visit our floral store.