She took sick 25 days before her 71st birthday.
By Tuesday we had come to terms that she would die before the week was out.

In a raspy voice she said, “there’s a time to live and a time to die.”

She misquoted the bible verse but I knew what she was telling me. It was time to let her go. She had suffered enough, endured more pain that her body could take.

Watching her frail body get weaker each day was a painful ordeal.

My brother manipulated my father and I into going home.
“Dad wants to go home,” he told me. And then he told our father that I wanted to go home as well.

He did us a favor as dad didn’t want to watch his wife die, and I sure didn’t want to be there either.

The day before dad and I were in the room when the priest administered the sacrament of Last Rites, a most beautiful of sacraments.

In her hand until her dying breathe my ailing mother held the rosary beads I gave her.

My older brother brought them back to me after mother passed away peacefully in her sleep.