One Year

My mother died a year ago today. It feels longer. I think that's because my mother had become a shell of the person she used to be. At the end, she rarely talked. She had no interest in anything, even her crossword puzzles.

It was time. She was ready; she told me herself. "I want to go," she said two days before she died of pneumonia. We had to let her go: no hospital, no extraordinary efforts to keep her alive.

It was time.