DJ, we were with Mom around the clock for days when she was dying. Her final day, the hospice nurse told us she couldn't beleive she was still alive. She had the teeniest space in one lung that was sustaining her. Her lungs were full of fluid.

She asked us to please leave Mom alone. She thought our touching and taling was forcing Mom to live on, though she was hardly capable. She told us to all stay out of the room. Every hour, one of us was to go in and give her the dropper of morphine in the corner of her mouth and say nothing, nor touch her. Then leave.

We tooks turns every hour. It was St. Patrick's Day. We'd finished our corned beef and cabbage. It was the 7 o'clock hour and my turn to go in. When I entered the room there was this tremendous silence. She was no longer laboring to breathe. My heart began racing and I ran out to tell everyone that Mom had passed. Dad couldn't beleive it so he went in alone, and sure enough. He came out and said it was so.

I was touched that I was the one who discovered it. My youngest sister who had just left to go to my home to shower and cahnge and visit with Ross, the kids, and other nieces and nephews who were camping out at our home since it was so close by, she was touched becaused because Mom waited for her to leave.

It's interesting. I share this because somehow, all of us found peace with Mom's dying. Heartwarming, isn't it?

I believe God orchestrated the whole thing.

DJ, for some reason, it's as God planned. Your dad probably didn't want any attention and willed to go silently. Maybe?

Cath, how is everyone holding up?