4/19/02 - 4/26/10

We'll miss you, buddy. You were loved.

The Fisher King

My dog is dying.

I don't mean to sound fatalistic, but it's the truth - Fisher, my beloved yellow lab, will be dead soon.

Actually, if I'm being completely truthful it's not that simple. He is not technically dying as there is not one illness that is ravaging his body and leading to his inevitable demise. There is no cancer spreading through his organs causing failure, no disease that will stop his heart at any moment. Instead he is cursed with a number of ailments which individually would allow him to live much longer but together will force us to make that difficult decision no pet owner wants to make - when to consider euthanasia. So I was wrong. He's not technically dying, just close to death. Six of one, half dozen of another - the result is the same, it’s the way he gets there that’s the kicker.

To date, Fisher has hepatitis, bladder stones, occasional elevated kidney values (due to hepatitis, we think), two torn ACLs, recurring UTIs (due to his medication), constant and painful ear infections (also due to the medication but also because of his breed and a predisposition) and the latest, a slipped disc in his back. The last one may just be the proverbial straw. He's in so much pain - So. Much. Pain. - and, unfortunately, nothing is really operable. I guess it's more than slightly ironic he was named for a tragic character.

It's the pain and obvious discomfort that is making this difficult for everyone. A Labrador Retriever is a tough breed. A dog bred for icy waters and thickets and extreme activity. They do not feel pain the way some other breeds do, so to actually witness the grimaces and twitches, to see his anxious, expectant face at the bottom of our deck stairs while he waits for me to come to him so that I can help lift his back end up over the few steps it will take for him to get back into the house, to see him take a few steps and have to lay down... It's heartbreaking.

And he's not even 8 years old.

In two weeks he'll have his birthday. For months I've been saying, Please, just make it to your birthday. Make it to 8. I don't know why 8 seems more reasonable than 7, why a few weeks or months make such a difference in my heart, but they do. He's supposed to live to be 12, I'm supposed to have at least four more years with him. It's not fair, I rail to myself and to my husband and to whoever else will listen. It's not fair, he's too young, too loved. It's not fair. But dying at 7 is unconscionable.

I watch him as he restlessly paces a few steps, trying to find a comfortable place to rest. He doesn't go far, he just can't, but he's up and down often. I watch him stare at the grass from his perch in the sunroom and I can almost hear him weighing the importance of walking down those deck steps to relieve himself against the pain he'll inevitably feel going up and down. But walk down the steps he must; one of the side effects of the Prednisone he takes is excessive thirst and frequent urination. Pee-dnisone is what some call it. At least it helped him get his appetite back. And I have a couple of rug cleaners, so there's that.

Sometimes I feel like we're living the canine version of hospice, waiting for the "patient" to decide when it's time to go, but there will not be a time like that. We need to decide for him. I suppose that's where a dog has the advantage - we can euthanize if things get too bad. There will be no machines or ventilators or life saving measures beyond what we've already done, no unnecessary suffering. If one more thing happens or if he gets much worse we'll need to end his life. His vet agrees. You've already done so much for him, she counseled as I worked things out while she listened.

Fisher is a dignified dog, we will let him go with as much of his dignity intact as we can.

But yet...

That all sounds so simple, doesn't it? Like a day will come when we'll just... know? When the combination of disease and pain and, oh how I hate to say it, cost will come to a head and we'll be forced to make the appointment to put everyone out of their respective misery? I don't think it will be that easy. There are far too many factors at work.

I feed him his pills in bits of bologna, the prednisone, the pain killers, the various antibiotics and assorted medications for ailments I do not understand, and sometimes I think, it would be easier if he were gone.

God help me, it would be easier.

The expense, the damn expense, would be gone. Oh, the expense. You'd choke on your tongue if you knew. No more yellow dog hair covering every square inch of my house, both inside and out. I'd get my sunroom back, since it would no longer be the sick ward. The constant smell of urine would abate. The trips back and forth to the vet. The looks from the vet techs when they see I'm there again with Fisher. Fisher's here! We love him, he's such a good dog, they say as they scratch his head. Ooh, he's even worse this time, poor Fish. However, he still wiggles with happiness. He somehow musters the strength to reciprocate the love. He still gets excited about meal time and treats and the occasional marrow bone. He stares expectantly when I come near. My puppy is still in that beaten down body. Somewhere.

But I fear the morning I'll wake and find Fisher unable to move on his own and I'm terrified I'll have to deal with it alone because my husband is off on a business trip. Will I be strong enough to physically move him and emotionally to hold it together in front of my kids? I think of these things far too often.

So go ahead and tell me he's just a dog. I will passionately disagree.

He's is a good dog... no, a great dog. Cranky, yes, and sullen occasionally but a lot of that can be chalked up to his chronic liver problems that were there long before we knew about them. He's not perfect by any stretch but perfect for me. I'll miss looking into his deep, knowing brown eyes. I'll miss him at my feet in the evenings and absentmindedly letting my hand fall to stroke his side. I'll miss rubbing his ears and hearing his satisfied groan. I'll miss the bent tip of his tail, the silly tricks he does for a treat, the way he snaps to attention when he knows we're "working". He's my dog and he is important.

I miss him already and he's not gone yet.

But I'm preparing and while we wait I'll spoil him. I owe Fisher that. He was at my leg when I cried for my mother. He was there when I needed someone to help me off the couch when I was hugely pregnant. He helped me in my somewhat crazy choice to become a dog trainer. I owe him more than I've been able to give back so the least I can do is give him the best now while I can. A scratch, help up the stairs, a marrow bone and a comfortable spot to rest his painful body and someday soon, a kindness that at this very moment brings me to tears when I think of it.

Marrow bone, not a pound of flesh but it will do.

Need

CC and I went to a local children's store today to exchange a hat and mitten set I had bought for Chicky. Despite my insistence she stop growing, she seemed to have had a growth spurt and needed a larger size. We were just going to run in, get the next size up, and leave because I had many more errands to do before we needed to head back to preschool for pickup when a family caught my attention on my way to the hat display.

There was a woman about my age with her two young children, the oldest barely out of infancy and the little one around 4 months old, accompanied by someone I assumed to be the woman's mother. The grandmother was pushing the double stroller, casually picking up whatever full price item she liked and adding them to the already huge pile of clothing hanging from the stroller's handle, while the younger woman looked over the racks of discounted 6 month-sized outfits.

"Do the kids have matching Christmas pajamas yet?" she asked her daughter, and without waiting for an answer she added two more pairs of pajamas to her stack. The daughter, seeing what her mother did, sighed with what seemed to be exasperation and went back to looking at the sales rack, shaking her head. She seemed resigned to her mother's shopping spree.

Try as I might I couldn't stop my throat from constricting and my eyes from tearing up. It was exactly something my mom would have done. I could easily put myself in that woman's place and my mom in her mom's. Mom would have spoiled her granddaughter's silly and would have ignored all my pleas to stop buying them things they didn't need. Secretly, of course, I would have loved every second, knowing how much pleasure she would get from dressing up the girls. She would have bought them little trinkets for no reason other than she saw something they would have liked and they were never far from her mind. It would never be about the purchase but what she could do to make her grandchildren happy. All at once I was overcome with longing for the inevitable bickering between us. Five hundred different emotions hit me all at one time.

I coughed, dabbing at my eyes while I knelt down pretending to look at a satin holiday dress I had no intention of buying, willing myself to not turn into a huge puddle of tears in the middle of the store. Sweat started to pool between my shoulder blades and behind my neck. I was alternately furious at the hand life had dealt us and overcome with loss, both for me and my girls. I had a hard time seeing through my anger at the younger woman. I couldn't think straight because I was too busy imagining myself in her place. Honestly, I wanted to shove her for not seeing how good she had it.

Leaving the store seemed like a very good idea at that moment. In my haste I almost forget to grab the larger hat and I would have if I hadn't snagged the arm of my coat on the rack as I rushed by. With it in hand, I pushed the stroller containing a very tired and cranky CC toward the register and waited for the lone sales associate to ring up the three customers in front of me. While we waited the grandmother and her overflowing stroller got in line behind us and CC, the social creature that she is, waved furiously at the woman.

"Hi!" she called. "Hi!!"

"Hi to you," the grandmother replied with a smile. "What a pretty hat you have. Did your mommy get you that hat?"

"Hi!" CC answered. She put her hands in front of her eyes. "Boo!" She cackled at her own game.

The older woman laughed and returned the gesture. "Peek-a-boo!" CC roared with laughter.

I didn't say anything, just smiled and tried to stop the prickly feeling behind my eyes from coming back. So many things my mom missed.

Finally it was my turn at the register. Beside it was a display of fleecy holiday pajamas. Normally I'm put off by those displays, obviously intended to entice the shoppers in line to put more in their cart, but this time I grabbed two pairs, size 12 months and 4T, and put them on the counter with the hat.

"Did you find everything you were looking for today?" the girl asked me.

You don't have what I need in this store, I wanted to say.

"Yes," I answered. In a shaky hand, I signed my name on the credit card machine.

The grandmother smiled at me as I gathered up the shoe CC had thrown while waiting for me. "She's beautiful," she said. "I bet she'll look really cute in those pajamas."

Tears were threatening again. "Thanks," I mumbled over my shoulder as I turned to leave.

I placed the bag with the Christmas pajamas on the handle of our stroller while CC yelled, "Bye bye!" all the way out the door.

Revelation

Chicky and I were enjoying a rare quiet moment together this morning. We were looking at pictures from my wedding day and she was showing an interest in them she had never displayed before. She was enjoying pointing out everyone she knew when we got to a series of photographs that made her pause.


"Who's that?"

"That's my mom."

"What's her name?"

"Her name was Brenda."

"Oh. Brenda." She let this information sink in for awhile. "Why is she crying?"

"Well, Puss, that's kind of hard to explain."

"I think she's crying because she loves you so much."

As I sat there with my arm around her and my chin on her head, she didn't see the tears forming in my eyes. She won't know for a long time that her sentence hit a tender spot. She won't know for a long time that truer words were never spoken, that she was exactly right. But I didn't realize it at the time the picture was taken.

"Mom, can I watch a show now?"

And as she climbed off the couch to fetch the remote, I knew the moment was gone. Which, for now, was probably a good thing.

The year nobody dies

My mother died four years ago today. Four years is not enough time to diffuse grief. I don't know if there is a set number of years that will do that but I know 1460 some odd days isn't enough time to make the pain go away.

It's been especially hard to get over her death because since she passed away in 2004 there has been a series of deaths in my family. In 2005 it was my paternal grandfather. In 2006 my maternal grandfather. And in 2007 my maternal grandmother. Not to mention assorted distant family members and friends of the family. There's been so much grieving I forget what it feels like to live without that constant cloud of hurt that lingers. There has been no time to heal.

---------------

They say bad news comes in threes. I don't know if that's entirely true but I do know that good news follows good news and bad news tends to follow bad.

I remember the day I found out my mom's cancer had come back. Or more to the point, it had never really left and now it was really bad. She was going to need another extremely invasive, time consuming surgery, which meant a long recovery time but no guarantees it would actually work.

A while later I got a call from the women's clinic I went to. They had found something in my last pap smear that was very concerning. I had level four dysplasia, one small step away from cervical cancer. It was very aggressive and if I didn't have the offending cells removed I would be in a heap of trouble.

I lost it. I started crying on the phone which is not like me at all. I can handle a lot but that much at one time... It did me in. I was inconsolable for the rest of the day though I told nobody about my problem. I needed to concentrate on one stress at a time.

In the end I was fine. Things were taken care of and I healed. My mom had her surgery and it was as awful as we feared, but she pulled through and lived another four years or so. But to this day even though I can absorb stresses in my life like a sponge and seem like I've got my shit together it just takes that one thing to tip the scale and have everything come tumbling out on top of me.

------------------

Fisher had a CAT scan today, today of all days. After a horrendous weekend where he did nothing but vomit and subsequently lost five pounds from his 75 pound frame, refused his food and generally looked nothing like the dog I knew just a few weeks before, it was decided he needed more tests STAT.

The vet is still not sure what's wrong with the poor dog. What she could tell me was though she didn't know what it was she did know what it wasn't. No masses, spleen looked good, blah blah blah. Then she mentioned lymphoma. There is a possibility of lymphoma.

And treatment options if it came to that.

And words like "aggressive chemotherapy" and "six to 18 months".

And I lost it, just a little, but this time I kept it all inside. I waited until we hung up before letting the tears fall.

He needs a biopsy but his platelets level is so low there is concern of him bleeding out. The bladder stones are still there but they are not a result of the existing liver problem, as she first thought. His white blood cell count is going crazy. He has elevated, very elevated, ALT levels and some other initials that I can't quite remember because I started to zone out.

It was all too much to take on a day that already was too hard.

Just too much.

--------------------

I was speaking with my aunt the other day, my mom's closest sister in both age and relationship. She's the one who always keeps in touch and makes sure we don't lose contact with each other when the rest of the family could care less.

She mentioned that she really needed 2008 to be an easier year. The last four have been so hard and she needs to rest. We all need to rest and heal.

She said she really needed 2008 to be the year that nobody dies. I couldn't agree more.

A metaphor for my life

I was sunning myself yesterday, sitting on a lounge chair next to my pool while Chicky slept, when I had the odd feeling that someone was watching me.

And there was.

A fluffy little bird (maybe a Winter Wren?) was sitting on the edge of my pool not seven feet away from me. Just sitting there. Not moving. Looking at me.

That's odd, I thought, I didn't notice that bird fly over here. I must be really into this book.

Which, if you are familiar with his books, is unfortunately not as good as most of the other books in this series.

But I digress.

So I watched this wee bird, who didn't seem to be very old at all, sit there next to the pool. I don't know how long we sat there like that - long enough that he seemed to fall asleep for a moment - but I was struck by the oddity of the situation. Why is he sitting there? Why doesn't he fly away when I make the slightest movement?

I had to investigate.

I moved to a sitting, instead of a lounging, position. He didn't move. I shimmied closer in my chair. He didn't move. I stood up. Yep, still not moving.

Well, that does it. He was obviously hurt and couldn't fly. I wondered if the hawk I had seen all summer circling our neighborhood (the one that probably ate my cat) got a piece of this poor bird.

Now, I should preface the rest of this story with a word about myself: As much as I love animals, I am not the one who rushes forward to be the first to help an injured squirrel, turtle, or bird. I'm practical when it comes to wild animals and birds, there's the circle of life and all that. And if we're being honest, birds freak the fuck out of me.

But I couldn't just let him stand there at the edge of my pool without doing something. What if he fell in?

I moved closer toward him and that scared the hell out of the poor bird. He started hopping away.

Well, that confirmed my fear. He couldn't fly. But damn, that bird could hop.

I walked briskly after him but every time I reached down he hopped out of reach. The little sucker, didn't he know I was trying to help? Bird brain.

By now you may be thinking what I was thinking: Bird flu. Uh huh. Probably not the smartest thing to touch the bird with my bare hands, so I went inside to get a towel. And, for good measure, a shoe box.

Found the towel but for once in my cluttered existence I did not have one shoe box in my closet. What are the freaking odds?

I finally found a shoe box. It held a bunch of metal curtain tie backs. Those tie backs have now been added to the clutter in my bedroom. They fit in well.

I went back out to the pool and there was the bird, right at the edge of the pool again. Poor baby, he was probably thirsty. Or needed a cool, refreshing dip.

I chased that bird through wet mulch (I didn't have shoes on) and over pea gravel. I stubbed my toe on the edge of my tomato box and swore a bit. Okay, a lot. But every time I threw the towel at the bird he would hop away. Even when I got the towel over him he hopped out from underneath it and away from me. Quickly.

In his frantic scramble for freedom the bird would occasionally lose his balance and flop over on this back, and that's when I got a chance to see some of the damage to his wing. It was bad. If the bird escaped my clutches and hopped into the dense overgrowth at the edge of my property he'd be cat food. I had to help this poor creature. It had become my mission to save him.

Let me tell you now that it was getting pretty late in the afternoon and Chicky had woken up from her nap. I could hear her singing to her baby doll in her crib through the monitor in my bedroom. It wouldn't be long before she started yelling for me. The pressure was escalating.

But if I catch this bird what the hell am I going to do with him, I thought. The cat will want to nibble on him and the dogs will have a conniption fit if they smell another creature in the house. They were already freaking out on the other side of the pool fence as they watched me chase this small being around the yard.

Fuck it, I thought, I'm getting crackers. After all, food works for the dogs (and for the cat, we don't call her Jabba the Cat for nothing) so maybe if the bird is really hungry he'll be more willing to acquiesce to my fumbling grasp. It could happen.

After grabbing a whole sleeve of Ritz crackers I ran outside... but there was no bird. Where the hell was the bird? I ran to the other side of the pool, Tweety's preferred spot.

I had already given the bird a name. I was in deep.

Oh, I'm sure you've got a better name for him, huh?

I started sprinkling cracker crumbs around his spot and into the shoe box where I had placed the towel, hoping he'd come to the crackers. I called to him, "Tweety! Tweety! Come here boy."

Oh my Christ. I hope my neighbors aren't watching.

I finally heard a small noise behind me. I looked back and saw...

Oh no!

Tweety's in the pool! That poor bird is going to drown!

Where's the net?

Jesus Christ, where the hell is the net?

Where is the goddamnmotherfucking net?!

The one time my husband actually puts something away and this is what he picks. The net was wedged under the deck and the detachable pole that it was firmly attached to was stuck under heavy tubing and other pool cleaning supplies.

Hang in there buddy! I'm coming.

Tweety was struggling but he seemed to be keeping his head out of the water.

I struggled to detach the net from the pole.

And struggled some more. I didn't need that fingernail anyway.

Finally! I turned back toward the pool with the net, ready to scoop up my bird and deliver him to safety...

And he had stopped moving.

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I scooped him up and frantically ran him to the shoe box. Ever so gently I laid him down in the towel-lined box,

"Come on buddy, wake up. Please wake up. Oh please, please wake up..."

I don't know what I was expecting: one of those Disney moments when the animal magically comes back to life?

Well, he didn't. I couldn't save him. I tried, but there was nothing I could do.

I couldn't save him.

And I cried.

Sitting next to my pool next to the wet carcass of an adolescent bird, I actually cried.

I couldn't save him.

Now that he was wet I could see the extent of his injuries. It was worse than I had thought. A portion of his wing was actually ripped away from his body and God only knows how long he had been like that: bleeding, without the ability to easily get food or water. No wonder he just sat by the pool, the poor guy was exhausted, disoriented and probably in shock.

I wouldn't have been able to save him.

I probably would have found him in the pool anyway, even if I hadn't chased the bird all over my yard. That's what I'm telling myself anyway.

Tweety is still in the shoebox, the cover closed to protect his remains, next to the pool where I left him. I think he deserves more than being flung out into the woods for the scavengers to get him. He deserves a proper burial. I didn't save him but I can do that for him.

Rest in peace, Tweety. I wish I could have done more for you, buddy.


---------------------

The death of a bird shouldn't hit me this hard, but it is. Perhaps given what I've been through recently I've become more fragile myself. Easily broken like a bird's wing.

However, if any one of you dares to inquire why I didn't jump in the pool to save the bird, as my husband did (and yet I let him live - I have no idea why), or ask why I didn't give the bird mouth-to-beak resuscitation , so help me God I will come through this computer screen and bitch slap you. Don't mess with me. I'm mourning.

Thoughts on grieving

I'm fine.

No, really, I'm fine.

Oh, thank you. But I'm fine.

Yes, fine.

Well, I'm okay. But don't worry about me. I'm fine.

Fine.

That's what you're supposed to say when someone you love dies, right? Sure, you get a grace period, an undetermined number of days to mourn, but after that you pick yourself up by the bootstraps and get on with your life. Life is for the living and all that. But how many days do you get to wallow in your own self pity because yet another person who was close to you goes toes up?

I may sound flippant about the whole ordeal, but this is me being serious. I've had too many people die on me in the past few years - my Mom, two grandfathers and now my maternal grandmother - and I'm tired. I'm so very tired. My protective armor comes out whenever the subject of death comes up, shielding me from the pain, pushing it back so I can see the pain waving to me but far enough away so it can't touch me. I was like this after Mom died. I gave myself, what, a week? Two? And then I went on with business as usual. Except it was business unusual. But to see me you never would have known, because I was fine.

Fine.

But there seems to be a chink in my armor. Since my Gram passed every morning has been a battle to get out of bed, and then the day lingers before me with its promise of sunshine but all I see is another opportunity for someone to leave me. I get jumpy when Chicky gets too close to our pool, I get anxious when Mr. C comes home later than expected. You'd never know it by looking at my face because I'm really good at hiding it, but it's there.

I'm having a bad week, as you can tell. Having to come off the extreme frenetic high of Blogher and straight to a loved one's death bed is not an easy transition and it seems to have thrown me all out of whack. I might feel stronger next week after the service is over and all the receiving lines and sermons and luncheons are over, but today I'm fragile.

I told myself at Blogher that I was going to start getting real with my blog posts (please save your Real World jokes for a later date) as a way of therapy. So here goes nothin'... Hi, I'm Mrs. Chicky and I have a problem with avoidance. I come from a long line of avoiders, most of whom are dead now, and it's time to break that cycle. There's a little piece of me playing with blue Play-Doh at my feet and she doesn't deserve to live like this. Pretending she's a butterfly or a monkey or a purple fairy - that's fine. Pretending that life is fine even when it's not? Not fine. As a matter of fact, I'd like to work on removing that word from her vocabulary.

Next week will be better. I hope. As a kind woman just said to me in an email (and I really hope she doesn't mind me quoting her), "I don't like the netherworld between death and funeral. There's something about having the ceremony that puts the stamp on death that I actually find very helpful in that it allows me to start grieving." I concur. Next week I should be fine.

Bloody hell.

This is going to be tougher than I thought.

Gone

She's gone.

She let go early this morning after what, I'm sure, was a very long night. Slipped away while most of her family was out of the room. After having eleven children and raising ten to adulthood, after loving 18 grandchildren and six great grandchildren, and giving her everything to those around her whom she cherished she left us on her own terms. Peace at last.

I wonder if she found the outstretched hand of my mother - strong again now that she's free of cancer - and grasped it firmly in both of hers, happy to see the ones she had lost. I wonder if she immediately found my Papa, who was waiting for her for only 8 months, and he gave her a smile and said "Jesus Christ, old lady, it sure took you long enough to get here. Were you shacking up with some other guy or something?". If she found my real grandfather, my mother's dad who died when they were so young, and they're now catching up on old times. If she's with my young uncle who died so tragically and the young baby she lost so many years ago to pneumonia.

So much loss in our lives over the past few years, but this one is particularly tough. Without her to anchor us we will be left to drift apart.

And so, another wake, another funeral, one more chance to get the family together and make promises. We'll get together soon. This fall, Christmas, next summer. Most won't happen. Not without Gram to bring us together at her large kitchen table.

Not without our Gram.

But I thank you for all the thoughts. A surprise to open my email and see them all. Thank you.

Lost for words

There are so many stories and pictures from Blogher '07 that I want to share with you all, but I'm afraid you'll either have to wait or go read about it from other bloggers, because upon arriving at the airport today - actually, before I even got on the plane - my life was set into a tailspin.

My grandmother is dying. I received the phone call while I was waiting for my flight that she took a turn for the worse and the doctors don't think she has very long to live. I have only just placed my tired, hungover behind on my couch after a long day because Mr. C took me straight from the airport to the hospital to gather with my family around my Gram's bed. It was hard to leave but Chicky was getting tired. I'll go back tomorrow, if she makes it through the night. I think she might because she's holding on, clinging to life through sheer will. For what I don't know, but my Gram is a strong woman and if she's not ready to go yet then she has good reason for choosing not to join her husbands and her three children at the moment.

So my blogging will be sporadic at best until life gets back to normal. Not that life without my Gram will be normal. To the contrary, I don't think my life without Gram will ever be the same again.

But my life has also be irrevocably changed due to meeting some of the most fabulous women - and men - on the planet. I keep expecting that I'll walk out my front door and you'll all be there. That you won't makes me very sad.

Next year, my friends, next year.

Until then I'll keep our laughter with me. It will help get me through.

2004

There are some years that have more significance than others for some people. They are the years whose significance we never forget. The year of our birth or the year we graduated from high school, for instance. Or the year you got married, had a baby, last fit into your skinny jeans. We remember the songs on the radio and the movies that were popular. Hell, we even remember the weather patterns (if you have weather, that is). For me 2004 is one of those years whose importance outweighs most others.

It was the year the Patriots won the Super Bowl and the Red Sox won the World Series.

It was the year Mr. C and I took our last trip to Italy for some time, I suppose. Because...

It was the year I got pregnant.

And it was the year my mother died.

Three years ago, this week. In 2004.

They say that time has a way of helping us forget. Of healing all wounds. Enabling us to go on. As time goes on memories get soft around the edges. But honestly there are some things about that week leading up to my mother's death that I will never forget and I have no desire to do so.

It was unseasonably warm for the end of February in Massachusetts. The irony that my sun worshiping mother would choose to leave this earth on such a balmy day was not lost on me. It seemed fitting that she would break free from her shackles of pain and sickness on a day when her spirit could dance in the warm breeze, unencumbered by morphine, chemotherapy and cancer.

I'll never forget how her cool, dry hand felt on my cheek the last time she looked at me, the last time she really saw me without the veil of impending death covering her eyes. She said goodbye without saying a word, and though she lingered for a few more days she was never the same. She was never really there with us but instead in that space between life and death. I still lean my head into that phantom touch. I close my eyes and imagine she's still there in front of me. I imagine that I let myself cry in front of her instead of turning away to hide my pain. And I remember her face and her look that said she was at peace with what was going to happen.

The next few days are a blur of visitors, nurses and medications. Until the day she died. That day I remember vividly. And that's my memory to keep, for myself and my daughter one day. I may not remember which of her old friends came to pay their respects at her wake - in my defense there were hundreds of people there - but I'll remember each and every hour of the day she could no longer fight the cancer that was ravaging her body.

Is it a coincidence that my mother, the Red Sox fan(atic), died the same year the Sox finally won the World Series? Probably, but I'd like to think she had something to do with it. Our trip to Italy was planned months before my mother died, but I raised many (many, many) a glass in a silent toast to the woman who never saw the need to leave her country for far away lands. And my husband and I had decided to start a family that year, but after I lost my mother I finally realized how important she was to me. We named our daughter in her honor. There is a picture of her in my daughter's room. She is in my thoughts every day.

Three years have done nothing to dull the pain of her death. I still remember hugging her thin frame to mine, wondering if my shoulders felt as frail as hers and knowing that, yes, they probably did since our bodies closely resembled each others. I remember the feel of her hand, the shape of her fingernails, the roundness of the knuckles in contrast to her long, thin fingers. And I remember missing her immediately upon her passing. That memory has not dulled. The wound has healed but the scar remains. And I go on.

But I carry her with me. Always.