Preparing for a death

Michael's mother is dying of cancer. She is 88 and our children's last grandparent. All of them adore her. Mom has been the sun, the family nucleus around whom her four sons and daughters-in-law and 13 grandchildren have revolved.

Not so many weeks ago I was buying our daughter Melinda a beautiful formal for her high school's Winter Ball. Today we shopped for somber clothes and shoes for her to wear to Mom's funeral and wake ... soon.

I felt weird doing this shopping. We enjoyed ourselves, yet the purpose of our errand was so sad.


Mom and nine of her 13 grandchildren on Thanksgiving day, 2004. She's the teeny one in the middle.

If you pray, please say a prayer that she will have a peaceful death.