Winter into Spring

It's been a while since I've blogged. It's not that there's little to write about, but that there's too much.My mother was diagnosed with two different kinds of cancer, and her emphysema has gotten worse. She's dying, not tomorrow, not next week, but sooner rather than later.My mother is a private person. She was, shall we say, less than thrilled that I wrote a memoir. But somewhere, somehow, she knew I had to. It was necessary for my spirit. The same reason I'm writing this post.I'm deeply happy to report that my mother's cancer is just one part of her late story. She's also fallen in love. She met Abe in a restaurant. It turns out he was separating from his wife, and, coincidentally, lived in my mom's apartment complex. My mother is 82 (man, if I had smoked the way she does, I would have kicked decades earlier), Abe is 85, and it's incredible to see two old people giggle. When my mother said, "Abe, you could be going out with a younger woman, like someone who is 70," he replied, "but you do it for me." When my mother told Abe she had cancer he said, "everyone has something."We do. And I thank the universe for sending Abe to my mother, to love her, to hold her, to make sure she eats, and to make her feel, during the last chapters of her life, like the most beautiful woman in the world.