So yesterday was the second anniversary of my mother's death.

I do not want this date to be one of the things I remember about my mother. I want to remember her in her birthday, in Christmas, in gardening and crafting and the boys' birthdays, because she would always make a big deal of them, the day off work, the day off school. I'd rather remember her in the things she did for people. I don't want to remember that unspeakably cruel day.

I was almost successful yesterday, until the dream that picked me up and shook me awake.

I don't want to remember the color of her skin, the blankness of her eyes, the pain that we had to beg and demand to be eased enough for her not to cry, big gulping sobs and the incomprehension of a child. Don't want to remember her increasing confusion, talking to people who weren't there. Her fear, that I had nothing to offer to quiet. I tried. Dear God, I tried. I told her, when they came and got her for that last trip to the hospital, that they were taking her there to make her more comfortable and manage her pain better. Both were lies. As helpless and inadequate as we felt at home, the hospital was worse, having to tell people again and again "no, she has pathologic fractures, don't touch her that way, don't lift her that way." Not once, but over and over. The brisk and somehow indecent cheerfulness of the staff that I think was meant to be reassuring. The repeated sticks with needles because nobody would LISTEN when we said 'call for the tech, she's hard to put lines in' and of course, they ended up doing it anyway but not until there'd been several unnecessary attempts.

I told her, when she was afraid, that they were going to help her manage her pain better than we could. Later, she was talking about "liar," and a word that Dad thought sounded like "puppy" but I think it was me, that she was angry and asking me why they'd taken her from home to the hospital only to hurt her. That something was in her head of her father's last hours in the hospital and the treatment that had ended up torture, not cure.

I didn't know. Mom, I'm sorry, I didn't know. We thought they could help. By the time we knew they weren't going to it was too late. Maybe it wouldn't have been any easier at home and I'd have the feeling every time I walked into the house that you'd suffered without needing to. But I can't know that.

I love you. I miss you. I keep thinking about how much you would have liked to see me doing Art-A-Whirl, the suggestions and the people you would have dragged there, the questions, the suggestions.

I wish I could have believed in myself enough to do it when you could be there.

I wish when I dreamed you, it was when you were happy, and not that pain and anger and fear and grief of those last couple of months. of that last day.

I wish something I had done would have helped. Anything.