Dear Mom,

I had a dream about you last night.

You and Nana were dressing me as if I were two years old. You had put a purple, collared shirt on me (very similar to the purple peasant shirt that you bought for me last year but with a business-casual type of collar). Over it, Nana had put a darker purple long sleeved shirt. The lighter purple shirt-sleeves were sticking out of the darker shirt and I was fiddling with them because I knew how ridiculous it looked.

You stepped back to evaluate your work while Nana continued to fiddle and fuss. She asked your opinion and you said "well, I would have put the collar up more" (referring to the shirt that you had chosen for me). Nana adjusted it and the dream went hazy.

You would read so much into this dream and we would get swept away into a conversation about my dreamworld, about my two mothers, about what a wonderful balance our three dominant personalities have managed to achieve.

I can't believe that we're losing you but I'm not fighting it, either. Am I a bad daughter? Should I be railing against this? We've been railing against it for over a year and we've had such awful luck. My heart is in denial; it hopes that you will rise from your bed a cured woman after some time of well-deserved rest. My spirit, though, is tired. Tired and guilty and horribly, terribly sad. And so I am done believing or hoping or stressing about this journey. My breast is split down the middle and I am flayed open. Life is painting me with experience and I am just lying prone, functioning at minimum capacity just as you are. I am barely here.

In awhile life's brush will leave me. I will sew myself back up -- I will be a whole woman again, but a woman painted by your life, your journey, your death and my interaction with it all.

You've been hanging on for just over a week and it's so deceptive. You'll make little noises and your eyes will flutter open and your breathing quickens when we talk to you. Are you listening? Are you there? The doctors and nurses don't seem to think so but I know that you're still in the body that has treated you so unfairly. I want to soothe you. I want to hold you and tell you that we understand if you have to let go. I think, though, that you're still fighting and I feel so guilty for not fighting with you.

Two weeks ago you told me that you wanted to try a new approach. You wanted to lie in bed and just be sick for awhile. I reasoned it out with you, encouraging the idea because your previous modus operandi wasn't working out. Was our reasoning partly responsible for your bodily deterioration?

I cannot write anymore. We'll talk tomorrow-- I'll tell you what I hope will ease your pains, I'll tell you that we've got it all under control. I'll tell you that I'll miss you but that we'll be okay. I don't know if I'll be telling you the truth or not.