They drove away from my dorm in LaCrosse that September morning, and Mom cried the entire way home. Dad comforted her as best he could, but she was inconsolable. It felt as though her baby was going away forever.

We drove from the hospital in Madison this afternoon, and I cried the entire way home. Dad comforted me as best he could, but I was inconsolable, and he joined me in my tears. It feels as though my momma is going away forever.

An ambulance is bringing Mom home tomorrow morning. Hospice is bringing by supplies tonight...setting up a hospital bed. She wants to be at home. She's faded quickly this week. The pain is etched in her face. She struggles just to move her arm. The pain is making her cranky, a complete deviance from her normal demeanor. The shift in personality is perhaps the hardest for me.

But, as I left, I lightly brushed her arm, and said my goodbye. She opened those beautiful hazel eyes and smiled so sweetly...and I just wanted to cradle her and protect her from the world. I want to save her from the end, but ah...I'm meeting with the brick wall of my finite power.

"I think she needs to be told that it's ok to go," several have now lent a voice to the sentiment. Charlie and I have come close to mutual tears at our perceived role in this direction. We've never cried in front of one another. Mom's been declining quickly. I watched them apply Vaseline to her lips and swab the inside of her mouth with water yesterday afternoon. I watched her doze off in the middle of a sentence. I watched her wake up to dry heaves. She hasn't eaten anything in days.

Wednesday afternoon they ordered a CT Scan of her head, ruling out possibilities of brain tumor. It came back clean. So...apparently she's healthy as a horse? There's talk of maybe inserting a tube through her stomach, so they can flush the contents before she vomits. She no longer urinates.

People want to see her, visit with her...she doesn't want them there. She barely wants me there. She doesn't want me, or Charlie, to remember her like this. She tears up when I enter the room and turns her face the other direction for awhile. She hates it...the grief clogs the room and I claw the air for my next breath.

"Wait until I get better," she mumbles in almost-gibberish. She'll visit with all of her friends once she's better again, she promises. This isn't living. She doesn't have the strength to walk. She regurgitates ice chips. She's either in great pain or doped up on pain killers...and there doesn't seem to be a happy medium.

I have a prayer locket, compliments of Aunt Debbie, circa Christmas 2004, in honor of my mother's valiant fight against this disease. I scribbled on a scrap early this week, "Grant her peace," and tucked it inside. My prayers are on a deeper level now. I don't ask for specifics. I don't ask for favors that I'll ever see. I want a reckoning, a final judgement from the higher power. I just want it over, whatever end that may be.

I comprehend so little in all of this; I beg for wisdom.

Now, tell me, how do you invite someone to die when they're so determined to live?

I keep my cool most of the time. I keep the naysayers and pessimists at arm's length. Every now and then, despite my careful guard, something tears in my outer defense and I am left wilted and dangling without hope of finding steady ground again. Saturday was one of those days. The confusion is almost as thick as the strain now, and I am seeing the tower of Babel revisited. So many voices adorn the air...so few of them make sense.

Finally, at wit's end, I knelt at my Mother's side and asked for honesty. I asked her for direction, I asked her what roll she wanted me to play. "Remember the good days," she muttered. "I don't want people seeing me like this," she continued. "We're kindred spirits, Laura. This conversation is silly. You know in your heart what I want. Don't listen to other people." She drifted off to sleep, the morphine taking hold, and I stumbled downstairs to sob.

Debbie tried to halt my progress with a hug...I batted her arms away. No comfort...I can't allow myself comfort yet. I can't give into that yet. I needed to rebuild my damaged wall because I knew the battle wasn't over yet and I still needed defense. Brenda came down after several minutes and asked quietly, a respectful distance away, "Are you ok?" I get that question a lot as of late. There is no answer. I'll never be completely ok again, but I'm as peaceful with life as I can be right now. Mom told me before she drifted off that I needed to throw the covers over my head and cry like nobody was there, like nobody could hear, like nobody could worry, like nobody could fawn. I wept my sobs dry.

A few hours later, when Dad came to take Mom back to their house, he came to me with understanding eyes. We could both tell that Mom turned a corner on Saturday. I rib my father a lot. I roll my eyes nearly constantly in his presence. Often, I groan in realization that half of my gene set comes from that dorky Norwegian. But another corner has been turned in these last months. My father and I have grown close. He is one of the most decent men that I know, always has been, but I'm beginning to see more of the man these days. More of the heart, patience, and kindness. He has been my dearest friend in the last week.

Today, Mom is in the hospital again. Her pained body is filling with fluid. Dad called me throughout the day with updates and to let his thoughts free. I told him that he sounded tired. He said the same of me. I told him that he sounded weary. He said the same of me. We're all living in a heightened state of fatigue. There's a thread of discord that frays relentlessly, preventing peace, preventing rest. It is a discord with the way life is supposed to go...the good health, merrymaking, laughter, love...and the sense of forever.

So, I like popcorn.

Air popped.

Plain.

Thus, I have an air popper...and I think it has been my golden ticket for residence with my Aunt Brenda these six months complete. She is a popcorn lover from way back, and she was the fair maven who taught me that popcorn existed before there were even microwaves! (But not before stoves, obviously.)

The thing is, it's a pain to have to monitor the popping of the corn. It takes about two seconds shy of forever coax the little guys out of their shell using the oil-popped method, and it's quite easy to become distracted in the meandering dawdle of two seconds shy of forever...and particularly if you are of an attention deficit disorder state. Brenda, needless to say, finds popcorn popping of this fashion to be all together impossible and not a little improbable too.

The smell of burned popcorn tends to hang upon the air.

Enter the air popper:

Step one: Add popcorn.
Step two: Place bowl beneath spout.
Step three: Plug into outlet.
Step four: Walk away.
Step five: Sing a poor rendition of Aerosmith's Walk This Way.
Step six: Play the air guitar.
Step seven: Collect completed bowl of popcorn.

See? Simple. Sassy. Satisfying. The air popper is nothing short of absolutely perfect in every way. Brenda loves it, and pours the butter and salt as though they were the Promise Land's fabled milk and honey. She's had a popcorn strike going on about the house, a prohibition on the corn who would pop in the name of post-holiday waistline recovery. It's been hell.

Although I force my chosen lifestyle on no one, am outspoken on the subject not, I find it is still an issue. Yes, I am a somewhat-encyclopedia on healthful living...but if that's a resource you want to tap into, you've gotta open the cover. I don't read uninstructed. Brenda tucks her head shyly as I grab my bowl of plain popcorn and she pours the freshly melted butter over hers.

But today—TODAY!—she had a breakthrough as she glanced at a an article entitled something like Thoughts for 2006. Vindication was sweet, I am certain, as she read, "Health nuts are going to feel pretty silly lying in a hospital bed, dying of nothing."