Rose Mellie Rose

"Mellie wanted to spend her last days lying on her bed in front of the bay window overlooking the ocean"

I found the book's treatment of water interesting, especially with regard to death. Nem dies underwater, the elderly Mellie makes a point of seeing the ocean from her deathbed, and one of Mellie's last sights is of the ocean. I'm not sure if water is just a symbol for change, as flooding influences where the characters choose to live or the ocean acts as a threshold for change between the island and the continent. There is definitely significance to Mellie living on an island. It has an oddness to it—that change surrounds her constantly, through the change and turbulence of the ocean, yet that very barrier of change holds the island in a state of sameness. It separates Oat from that which would change it. In its relation to death, perhaps the water holds an air of possibilities denied or out of reach for life. Water is what the dying could have done—ways they could have changed—that they regret.