Like everyone else, I am shocked that she went so quickly.  But an article in today’s Sac Bee said she had known for the past six weeks or so that the end was in sight.  What must that be like, to know the time of your end of life on earth is so near?  I can’t imagine…

And yet when I was in the hospital with three different kinds of pneumonia, I knew I was mighty sick.  I remember lying in bed listening to myself breathe, thinking how each rasp sounded so like my mother’s the day she lay dying.  But that “not me” attitude still prevailed.  Even with the tube down my throat and the ventilator pushing air into my lungs, I never thought the end was near.

It’s only now, several years later, that I look back on that time and think “My God….”