"Are you sitting down?" the voice asked. "It's Mom, Jen, she's in the hospital. She has cancer. So far, they have found 7 tumors in her brain...."

Most of the conversation eludes me after those words. I remember sinking into the couch and that the tears began to fall. I couldn't make them stop. Those sentences uttered by my sister were worse than receiving a thousand beatings. My heart stopped for a moment, and I couldn't breath. The world spun crazily on its sides, and to this day, I swear I screamed--a primal sound of anguish.

Through the next day, all I could do was weep...the tears would not cease, as memories flooded through my numb mind. Visions of Momma laughing, or dancing in the living room. Images of lively face, lit up with impish joy, her eyes full of mischief. As each rememberance danced through my head, the tears would start anew.

By that night, I had my things packed, and along with my husband and children we journeyed half a country away. Momma needed me, she was sick, in a hospital and she needed me.

I thought I was prepared for what I would find when I got there, but in truth, when someone you are that close to becomes ill, there is nothing in the world that can prepare you for it. Her small frame was bloated, and she had what she affectionately called, "Alice Cooper" stripes around her eyes...

I was raised to be strong, to pick up the pieces and keep on going, but in the moment I stepped into my mother's hospital room in the Cancer Ward at University of Iowa Hospital, it was like I was five years old again, and caught in the grip of a nightmare. The only difference was, this was real, and this atrocity would not be going away in the light of day.

The days seemed to run together after that. I stayed with my father while my husband returned home and to work. The tears that flowed so freely before I had arrived, were now carefully hidden from public view. They had to be, for Mom's sake. A happy face needed to be put on to shelter my own pain so Mom wouldn't see it.

Those days in her hospital room were difficult to say the least. Yet, my sisters and I, we managed to bring laughter to her...Tiki put up a collage of pictures on her bulletin board, so that she would have her family "close", and Ann made her a beautiful jar filled with marbles, so that when she began to lose hers (from the radiation treatments) Mom would have plenty extra...

We brought our joy to Mom, while inside we were falling apart. Outside of her room, we fought and bickered, the same as we had since childhood, as we each tried to deal with this hell that had been foisted on us. We tried to give her life--our life by pretending this was nothing more than a holiday. But as each day passed, and the news from the doctors grew worse and worse, it became more and more difficult to pretend.

It is hard to explain what took place in those early days...At times, it is a blur, and at times it is so very clear. Each day, Mom was taken for radiation therapy. Sounds like a treatment, right? It wasn't. It was simply to reduce the size of the tumors in her brain so she would have no pain. The doctors were curt and rude, not wanting to speak to any of us directly or with a straight answer.

After two weeks of tests and therapy, of hell and waking nightmares, finally the family meeting was arranged. It was then that the reality hit. Mom was going to die. Plain and simple as if she were no more than a blot on the face of humanity. It was the hardest thing for all of us to sit in that small airless room, as the Doctor gave his prognosis, while outside the sun still shone and the birds sang.

The prognosis was three months. The cancer was not only in her brain, but her lymph node, her lungs, and riddled throughout her body. He hinted at it also being in her stomach. As each word fell from this man's lips, it was like a hammer falling on my mother's coffin. The x-rays were produced, and shown to us so that we could see. The test results were paraded before our faces, as if he had a deep need to prove that he was telling the truth.

There was nothing that could be done, nothing. No treatment, no magical cure. It was too late for a shining star to be kept in the sky. All we could do would be to take her home, and let her do as she pleased until the cancer took her life. There were a dozen or more scripts that she had to take, to keep her strength up and to keep any pain at bay.

That day as I sat by her side, I desparately wanted someone, anyone to yell at...I wanted to blame someone, anyone for what was happening. This wasn't right. She was too young to die, to good and too loving, she was my best friend, and damnit who could I blame for this?

The day she came home, was the last time our entire family was together. Tim was there, Tiki and Lindsey, Ann, Klyn, and Bradley, Dad, me, Tony and Crystal. We were all there. And everyone was tense, and cranky, as we tried to smile and laugh for the last family pictures we would have with Mom.

Those pictures are all over throughout my house now...and I look at them with a pang that I couldn't stay with her longer, and that Dad and I couldn't get along at the time. I was up most of the night with Mom, talking and holding her hand. I needed that short time. For me, and I think she did too.

The morning found me on my way home, with a heavy heart and tears flowing down my cheeks once more. A week later, I returned to Mom, and her family in Minnesota... somehow when things like this happen, it seems best to go where you know there will be others that will hold you up should you stumble. I found warmth there, and a comfort that I didn't know I needed.

In one day, I was besieged with concerned siblings wanting to know how bad Mom truly was. They had been as shocked as I to see her without her hair, and bloated, and so very tired. The light was gone from her eyes, and it scared us all. We all watched as within hours of waking she would retire to sleep for long periods, and we would whisper and try to pretend we were okay. We all cried that day. Together, holding each other up as needed.

The next day found Mom truly ill. And all of us panic stricken over what to do. Dad finally resolved to take Mom home, to Iowa, to the Doctors once more, in hopes this time they would have a magic answer. With her body covered in hives, and a bucket next to her head, we made an eight hour trek to her house.

Her illness this time was simple. An allergy to pain medication. Easily fixed. I will never forget how much I hurt inside for her, as I bathed her in oatmeal water to ease the hives that covered her body. Shortly after that day, I came home to my husband and children, half a country away, feeling lost and alone.

The months drifted by quickly after that. I�called Mom every other day. Just to chat, and to try to keep her spirits up. I could hear the anguish in her voice when she would share with me some new miracle cure for cancer that just wasn't making her better. It felt as if my heart were being ripped out and trampled upon. The pain was so great. During her stay in the hospital, she had been adamant that she did not want to know the prognosis. And we all honored that wish. I couldn't tell her why the miracle cures didn't bring her health back, all I could do is give her a bit of hope that maybe the next one would...

During those last months of her life, Mom worked. She painted the apartments she managed, she cleaned them, she rented them out. She did everything. She even made it to bingo. She did not sit around waiting for death to claim her, she was on the go, the same as she had always been, which made it even harder to believe that there was a black cloud hanging over her head. This tiny wisp of a woman was fighting the black disease that riddled her body as David once fought Goliath.

As time passed, and her condition worsened, the one phone call I will always remember was the day she asked something of me. "Jen," she rasped, as by this time her lungs were so destroyed that she was now on oxygen. "Promise me, promise me that if I get so bad I can't take care of myself, you will pull the plug. Jen, promise me."

My heart stopped, and I could feel the prick of tears behind my eyes. Did she know what she was asking? My mind skipped back to a time when we had talked about this before. I recalled her words from that earlier time, "We are humane enough to put an animal to sleep if it is in pain and misery, yet those that we love must suffer forever, unless someone has the compassion to pull the plug. Personally, I want you to call Kevorkian...."

With a choked voice, I finally answered. "Yes, Momma, I promise."

Two weeks later, I was on my way home once more. My family treaded softly around me, as they knew Mom was dying. When I entered her house, I wasn't prepared, again. The vibrant woman who the week before had been pulling carpet was bedridden...or nearly so. The shock was tremendous to see her there, machines hooked up, and in that blasted metal bed.

The joy in her eyes was worth the shock. And as I sat by her side, and held her hand, no words were necessary between she and I. They say the eyes are the mirror of the soul, and I believe that is true, for as I gazed into my mother's eyes, it was as if she were young and healthy once more. I felt her peace, and it became mine. I knew a love that I had not known before. In those precious moments I spent just sitting in silence holding her hand, I came to know that I would never lose this woman I loved so much. All the hurts of the past disappeared, and only the joyous things remained.

Mom's last days on this earth were all that they should be. Ann and I attended Bingo with her, and we laughed with her when we could. We cried only when she could not see or hear us. Once more, we put on our happy faces and gave Mom joy for her last days. I remember when I�left to return to my home here, that as I hugged her those tears got away from me. She scolded me soundly, as she has so many time...for letting my hurts get the better of me. My last sight of her is sitting in a wheel chair so she could attend Bingo one last time, her small hand raised, her face resigned, and love in those blue eyes of hers. She knew it was the last time I would see her alive.

I left Mom that way...sitting in her wheel chair with a blissful smile creasing her face, and a hint of a tear in those blue eyes of hers. The day that Mom could no longer get up and go to the bathroom by herself, she died. She just slipped away. I am thankful for that, as I don't know that I could have kept the promise I made. I know that she made Ann promise as well...and I know that between the two of us, we would have forced ourselves to do it.

I can't remember if I cried then, I think I did. I know a relief swept through me, that she passed from this world with dignity and in no pain. I know that in the following days, as I travelled across the country once more, the tears came and went like an afternoon breeze. And as we stood in the funeral home, looking at her lifeless body, the unreality of it all plagued me.

We all cried, we laughed, we did as Mom had told each of us to do. We picked up the pieces and we went on. Ann and I wouldn't allow the funeral to be a morbid affair. We couldn't, for that was yet another promise Mom had extracted from us. With the strength we had inherited from her, we reminded family and friends of the funnier things Mom had done, and how much she had wanted all of us to laugh and above all to live.

I find that today, I still cry, and I still hurt. I have gotten over the need for someone to blame for all of this. In my heart, I know that simply it was her time. No more than that and no less. I can still hear her laughter, if I cock my head to one side and listen very carefully. It comes on the whisper of the wind and floats about me like a warm cocoon to ease my sorrows. In keeping the Holiday traditions alive and her memory firmly embedded in my heart, I shall always keep her near...