In the morning I would ask her if she slept any better because I was supposed to ask. I already knew the answer. She said the nights were hard, and it felt like she slept with a mountain on her chest.

I cut down my hours at Newbury Comics to part-time so I could drive her into Boston for inpatient treatment. On the drives she thanked me. Said I was a good son. She asked if I remembered going into Boston for my many back appointments and the surgery, and she talked about how worried and scared she was for me, and she was even more worried when I returned home from the hospital. She would then talk about dropping me off at college and how worried and scared she was for me, then, too, but in a different way. She talked about the past on those drives, as though it was all we had.

When she was still able to live at home, her friends and my aunt stopped by a few times each week, bringing food and books and hats. I let Mom have her time with them alone. I didn’t hover. I retreated upstairs, into my tower, so I wouldn’t hear them be well-meaning and tell her she looked good and how strong she was. I still heard them say it all, though. And I cried when I heard Mom say she was trying, then a few weeks later she said she was tired, and then, eventually, she said, simply, “I’m ready.”

On the nights it was just the two of us, we ate dinner together. She ate less and less with each meal. Then we watched TV until she fell asleep, which didn’t take long. I would pull blankets over her, roll her onto her side without waking her, hoping she could breathe better.

We played gin rummy and cribbage at the kitchen table when she had the strength. She wanted to have the strength. In her final days, her eyes got big, the scleras turning yellow. They were hard to focus and hold still, she told me. I think she was covering up how desperately she wanted to see everything, even if it was just the kitchen walls that still needed to be painted. She said she was ready, but I knew she wasn’t.

Some nights she rallied, found a hidden well of energy, and told jokes about wanting to smoke ten more packs of cigarettes and then she’d quit, jokes about her failing body, jokes about settling old scores and grievances from beyond the grave, jokes about where and how I would spread her cremated ashes. It was very important to her that she would be cremated. She asked, repeatedly, if I would do that for her. I answered yes, of course.

Every night (and on her last night, at the hospital) she tearily thanked me for being there.