My mother was known for speaking her mind, a trait that I apparently inherited – read on!

That particular day, it was good thing was that I was painting my mother’s fingernails. My head was bent to the task, so I didn’t look up.

But I could hear.

The good thing was that my father was visiting, too. My mother had had a stroke several months ago and sometimes I wondered if he was in tune.

The bad thing was that my father was lingering in the doorway of my mother’s private room in the nursing home… talking with a fellow choir member, ostensibly a friend of both of my parents, the fifty-year churchgoers of steadfast attendance.

The good thing was that it was Mother’s Day weekend and I’d wrested myself away from my regimen of radiation, a move sanctioned by my radiologist who said, “Go, go to your mother’s side in Indiana. Go, you must.”

You see, I was a frightened breast cancer patient who feared her mortality. Especially with an ultra-rare and little known type of breast cancer: Triple Negative.

There was much bad news attached to the fact and I’d been cautioned to never miss a treatment in a process that had begun eight months prior, in the fall. Chemotherapy had been cruel, I was bald, and my appetite had not fully resumed. What would I look like to a mother who loved me so?

The good news was that I’d asked the question. And, that there was a last-minute seat aboard a plane from the local southern CA airport, to fly a distance of 2000 miles. The good news was that I was not susceptible to infections, as I had been during the chemo series of six months.

The bad news that the man was speaking lamentably, “Does she know it’s Mother’s Day? Does she know she has children and, if she knows, does she know how many children she has?”

The question is: Who should I choose to decapitate? My father or his friend… To be continued.