Images

[vaneramos]

Cleaning the office turns up many interesting things. Buried on my desk was a bundle of photos Dad took last fall and printed to send me. I think this photo was taken on Labour Day weekend as we said goodbye. Mom might have guessed it would be our last photo together, though I didn't think of it at the time.

There were plenty of photos around after Mom died, but they recalled events long ago. This one reminds me of when she was sick, which chokes me up as the others didn't. She would soon be gone.

I don't think her appearance had changed much by Christmas, but her right eye was almost swollen shut. We were all together again but didn't take any family photos. By the time of my last visit at the beginning of February, she couldn't see out of her right eye, and the left one was swollen, too. She could no longer read, which was one of the great pleasures of her life. Especially the classics, like Tolstoy and Dickens. As a girl she had to walk to the corner and buy drugstore romances for her mother. Mom avoided pulp for the rest of her life.

The last few weeks deprived her of some things, but it wasn't a long time, and she was never in much pain. Breathing was only difficult the last day. Under the circumstances, it was the gentlest death possible.

Still, it is better to remember her this way.