Thank you. I love you.

Mom loved and adored all kinds of people. That may be where we get it from. My siblings and I. I’d like to think so. She was up for most anything. She lived life with warmth and openness and accessibility and irreverence and vulnerability and curiosity and a very forgiving nature. To know Mom, Ginnie, was to love her! And for her to know you, was to be loved. She had the remarkable ability of if you and she were talking, you and she were the only persons in the room. She heard you and she saw you, and she freely shared herself with you. If you wanted someone to laugh or cry with, Mom was the classy gal for the job. She even always carried tissues in her purse. For laughing or crying!

And for most of Mom’s life, with the exception of the standard adult illnesses, she’d been healthy and active. Until one day when she wasn’t. Until the diagnosis and the few years that followed. And even then, she still lived with gratitude and love.

Mom lay very still. Two pillows behind her head and one large pillow beneath her knees to give her lower back a rest. The tremendous swelling and resulting pressure on her back and belly were pretty awful and terribly uncomfortable. She’d go to the hospital every week or so to have a few liters drained off, which was a glorious relief. This left Mom in a near euphoria, she could now take deep breaths again and arch her back and enjoy a once again loose…