Christmas On Snowbird Mountain

“Devastating.”

“How long was she ill?”

“Nine years.”

“Damn! How did you deal with it?”

“Not easily, and probably not with much grace, but when you’re in that kind of situation you do what you have to and hope it’s enough. By the end of her life, my mother no longer knew who I was and had become abusive. That was really hard. She’d been a gentle, lovely person before, and the disease changed her.”

“Is that the personal problem you mentioned, the one that caused you to leave school?”

“Yes. She needed me at home. I was all she had.”

“Where was your dad?”

“Dad died of a heart attack when I was four. All I remember about him was that he had a loud laugh and kept butterscotch candies in his pockets for me. Growing up, it was just me and Mom.”

“No brothers or sisters?”

She shook her head. “My parents didn’t think they could have children. They’d tried for nearly twenty years without success and were resigned to being childless, and then, surprise! When my mom was forty-two and my dad forty-eight, she suddenly found herself pregnant.”

“Were you and your mom close?”

“Very close.” Her voice trembled. “She was my best friend. Watching her slowly die was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

He’d judged her too quickly. He’d assumed her to be flighty and irresponsible, but that didn’t mesh with the portrait now forming—a daughter who had loved her mother and been willing to give up her dreams to take care of her.