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“Yes,” I said to Rebecca. “Can you come over right away?”

“Of course.”

“And Dad says visitors can only stay for a few minutes.”

“Okay. I’ll be right here.”

I have to say that I am kind of proud of myself for how I am handling this task that Dad trusted me with.

12:38 P.M.

Oh god. Once again I have to ask WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? How can I be thinking about

what kind of job I’m doing while Mom is in the next room dying? There must be something vastly wrong with me. I’m some kind of aberration.

12:44 P.M.

Another thought. Dad didn’t say anything about this, but there are a few people I should probably call and tell to come over quickly. It would be awful if someone wanted to say good-bye to Mom, someone Mom would have wanted to say good-bye to, and the person called too

late.

I started a new list. People I should call right now. I tried to keep the list as short as possible. At the top I wrote Dawn and under that Carol and Jack. They could all stop by when Dawn came home from school. No, that won’t work. Carol and Jack will still be at work. Besides, what if Mom dies while Dawn is at school? Should I call her at school? Right now? Should I call Carol and Jack at work?

This is getting out of hand.

I don’t know what to do.

12:56 P.M.

What I should do is forget the stupid lists and go sit with Mom myself.

1:10 P.M.

She’s getting weaker. She’s hardly with us anymore. I just held her hand for a bit, then left.

1:29 P.M.

Rebecca’s here. Dad let her into Mom’s room, and he and Aunt Morgan and the nurse came out.

They sat down in the kitchen and Aunt Morgan realized that none of us had done anything about lunch. Even Aunt Morgan forgot this time.

“Does anyone want lunch?” she asked. (A first.)

“No,” Dad and I said at the same time. (It isn’t like we never eat. The thing is, people keep coming by with food. There’s stuff everywhere, and we sort of nibble on it from time to time all day long. Not the most healthy way to eat, but at least we’re eating.)

So Dad and Aunt Morgan and I sat in the kitchen and didn’t say anything. This time, though, the silence didn’t feel uncomfortable. I know Dad and Aunt Morgan feel just the way I do. Drained.

I was sitting in the kitchen thinking about Rebecca in Mom’s room, and out of nowhere I found myself saying, “I wonder how you say good-bye to someone forever.”

Dad and Aunt Morgan looked startled for a moment, then thoughtful. And then their eyes filled with tears.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No. That’s okay.” Aunt Morgan reached across the table and put her hand on mine. “I think we’ve all been wondering that.”

I nodded. “I mean, this isn’t like saying good-bye to someone at the airport. Someone you know you’ll see again in two weeks. Or even in two years. This is …”

“Forever,” Dad finished for me.

“You know,” Aunt Morgan said kindly, “I’m not sure we can plan or prepare for something like that. I think, when the time comes, the right words will come as well. They’ll just come.” She paused. “And by ‘right’ I don’t mean there are right or wrong words. I mean that you’ll find the way to say what you want to say to your mom. I truly believe that.”

I wanted to believe that too. I didn’t like the idea of planning a speech for Mom. I knew it would come out sounding stiff and formal. I relaxed a little.

1:50 P.M.

Rebecca left a few minutes ago. She was crying. I didn’t know what to say to her. Luckily, Dad walked outside with her. Now I feel all uncomfortable. This is what I’m thinking: After Mom dies everyone is going to be upset. Upset people are going to drop by the house. Upset people are going to phone us. And upset people are going to be at the funeral. How am I going to deal with them?

1:54 P.M.

I guess I AM the most self-centered, selfish person on the entire planet. Can I think of no one but myself?

2:10 P.M.

I saw with Mom again for awhile [sic]. She’s just sort of … drifting.

2:35 P.M.

I’ve set myself up in Mom’s room. I dragged an armchair in here. I jammed it between the doorway and the foot of the bed. Dad said it was okay. I know he meant it was okay because it won’t be for very long, but he didn’t say that. Anyway, I moved a table next to the chair and put some pens and a cup of tea on it. I can leave my journal there when I need to put it down. I think I’ll just stay here for awhile [sic].

Dad and Aunt Morgan are on the room too. The nurse is just outside.

The phone is being answered by Carol. The doorbell rang not long after Rebecca left, and there was Carol. She had left work early and she turned up here, saying she was going to do for us whatever needed doing. She didn’t ask us if we wanted her to come over. She just arrived, ready to help.

Carol is wonderful.

Very quietly she took over the lists we’d been keeping. And now she’s in the kitchen,

straightening up the mess we let pile up since yesterday — the food people keep bringing by. I think Carol is going to reorganize the refrigerator.

Mom is sleeping now. She looks kind of peaceful.

2:49 P.M.

It’s funny. Now I’m sleepy myself. I think I’ll take a little nap here in the chair.

3:39 P.M.

Well. I did have a nap. What a good sleep. It was very deep. Not too long, but I feel so much better.

Carol just whispered to me that Dawn is going to come over in a few minutes.

4:45 P.M.

It was awful. Horrible. I have never seen Dawn cry in quite the way she was crying after she came out of Mom’s room.

Dawn talked to Mom for about ten minutes, I guess. Carol stayed busy in the kitchen, and Dad and Aunt Morgan and I sat in the living room. When Dawn came out of Mom’s room she went to the kitchen and I could hear her sobbing with Carol. I didn’t know whether to go into the kitchen or what. Aunt Morgan must have realized what I was wondering about because she said,

“Let her talk to Carol for a bit, honey. Then maybe you and Dawn can go to your room.”

I nodded.

But when Dawn finally came out of the kitchen with Carol, she looked at me and burst into tears all over again. Somehow it just didn’t seem appropriate to say, “Do you want to go to my room?” So I did what felt right. I held out my arms to Dawn and we hugged each other for a minute or two.

Then Dawn blew her nose and said, “I better go, Sunny. I’ll see you …” She trailed off.

We were both thinking the same thing: that [sic] we probably wouldn’t see each other again until after Mom has died.

8:19 P.M.

The rest of the afternoon was much busier than I thought it would be. I figured I was just going to cozy up in that armchair with my journal and watch over Mom. But then a few people came by on their way home from work. The deliveryman from the Flower Basket came by three times with bouquets. Anther deliveryman showed up with a complete dinner that the people at the bookstore had arranged to be sent over for Dad and Aunt Morgan and me. We felt terrible because there wasn’t room for it anywhere (Carol’s carefully reorganized fridge was bursting at the seams) and we simply weren’t hungry. So Dad suggested that Carol take it home so the Schafers could have it for their dinner. Dad’s father arrived then, and Carol packed it and some other food into two shopping bags. As they were finishing, Carol realized that before they left it would be their turn to say good-bye to Mom. She burst into tears even before they went into Mom’s room. And when they came out, she looked nearly as bad as Dawn had. Then,

wordlessly, she and Mr. Schafer hugged first Dad, then me, and headed next door.

I sat in Mom’s room again and was about to open my journal when I noticed Mom watching me from her bed. I thought that surely she would have gone back to sleep, exhausted, after Carol’s visit, but in fact she looked pretty alert.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said.

“Hi, Mom,” I said.

“What time is it? I get so foggy.”

“A little before six,” I told her.

“Morning or evening?”

“Evening.”

“Oh. Are you going to eat dinner now?”

“We already ate,” I replied, which wasn’t exactly a lie, since while Carol was with Mom, Dad and Aunt Morgan and I picked at a fruit basket that had been delivered.

Mom nodded. Then she frowned and tried to sit up a little.

I hurried to her side and put another pillow behind her back.

“Thanks, honey. Sunny?”

“Yes?”

“There’s something I want to tell you. Can you get your father, please?”

My heart dropped. I actually thought I could feel it drop down through my chest cavity toward the ground.

Was this it? Was Mom going to say her final words? I felt warm all over and knew my face was flushed.

“Dad? Dad?” I said, rushing from the room.

“Sunny? What is it?” Dad leaped to his feet and we ran back to mol.

“Mom wants you for something,” I said.

Dad and I hovered over Mom’s bed and she looked up at Dad.

“I want to give Sunny the diaries now,” she whispered.

“Oh,” said Dad, and as he said the word he let out a little breath. I could see relief wash over him. “Yes. Just a minute.”

Dad left the room. When he returned he was carrying a stack of spiral-bound notebooks. He handed them to me.

I glanced down at them. There were twenty or so. Some of them looked pretty old and worn.

Well thumbed through.

“What are they?” I asked Mom.

“My diaries,” she whispered. “I started keeping them a long time ago. When I was around your age. I don’t write in them as much or as often as you write in yours, but I kept them off and on until just a few months ago. I want you to have them.”

“You do?” And then I asked a question that seemed silly to me, but I had to ask it. “Do you want me to read them?”

“Of course.”

“But journals are private.”

“Yes, I know. But I do want you to read them, Sunny. I’m not going to be around to answer all the questions you’re going to want to ask me. Questions about getting married and having babies — if that’s what you want to do. Or questions about how I felt on my first day at college or how my mother and I got along or what the day of my high school graduation was like. At least you can read about those things in the diaries.”

I was speechless. For a long time I didn’t know what to say. Finally I just said, “Thank you.”

Mom reached for my hand and held it for a moment. She smiled. Then the smiled faded and she grimaced. Dad called for the nurse. And I sat in my chair with the stack of diaries in my lap.

8:58 P.M.

I feel like this is my mantra — I say it so often. But … I am so tired.

Dad and Aunt Morgan and I are in Mom’s room again. After Mom gave me the diaries she had a horrible bout with pain. One of the worst ever. She was actually screaming. She screamed so loud that the Schafers heard her next door and Carol called to see if we needed any help. Then the nurse just gave Mom something that made her fall asleep.

So Mom is simply sleeping.

9:15 P.M.

Dad and Aunt Morgan and I have decided to sleep in Mom’s room tonight. We’ll sleep in the chairs. It seems like the right thing to do.

9:22 P.M.

Of course, tired as I am, I’m nowhere near able to fall asleep at this hour, sitting up in a chair while my mother is dying nearby. Dad and Aunt Morgan aren’t asleep either. Aunt Morgan is reading the Bible, and Dad is looking through those lists and some other papers.

I think I will start a list of my own: things [sic] I want to remember to say to Mom when the time comes.

1. I love you. (I guess that goes without saying, but it’s always nice to hear.)

2. I think you’re beautiful. (You always tell me I’m beautiful. I don’t know whether you mean it, but I like to hear you, of all people, say it.)

3. I always loved the clothes you made for me, even the ones that were kind of dorky-

looking. I loved them because you took the time to make them. Not all moms do those

kinds of things for their kids.

4. I love that you love animals. Not in the pet kind of way but in the wild-animal kind of way. We have never had pets and I understand that you don’t like the idea of “owning”

an animal. And that you especially don’t like animals in cages.

5. I loved the school lunches you used to pack for me. I loved that you took the time to make especial things (not just toss packages of food in the box) and that sometimes you

would hide a note or a surprise in the box.

6. I know I have been difficult and frustrating lately, but I also always knew that no matter how impossible I was being you still loved me. You have taught me what unconditional

love is.

7. I am sorry that I have been difficult and frustrating.

8. I can’t promise that I will never be difficult or frustrating again.

9. If Dad ever remarries I will try to be nice to his new wife. I know that Dawn hasn’t always gotten along with Carol, but I will try hard.

10. I will make sure Dad finds someone who will be good to him.

11. What should I do if Dad finds someone I think is not good for him? You won’t be here to help me with things like that.

12. Mom, I don’t understand why you have to leave me now. Couldn’t we have been allowed a little more time together? Maybe just until I graduate from high school?

13. I know it isn’t your fault, but I am mad at your for leaving me. Parents aren’t supposed to leave their kids, not until the kids are adults.

14. I’m sure I won’t be able to remember to say all these things to you, so I really wish you could read this journal. You gave me your diaries, and I wish I could give you mine.

9:51 P.M.

Just had to take a breather. My eyes are all teary. Partly from crying, partly from the dim light in here.

15. There are lots of things I’d like to give you. I wish I could give you a cure for cancer. I wish I could give you something that would really take away the pain, not just mask it