Twelve years ago, my mother passed away. It was Aug. 8, 2014, in the very early hours of a Thursday morning.

I had spent the night sleeping in her bed as she lay across from me in a hospital bed. My sister would come in every hour to check on mom’s breathing, and to see if she needed anything, but we knew that she was dying.

The wonderful hospice nurse hugged us tighter earlier that evening, when she left to go home. It was an unspoken message that the end, almost six months after the journey homeward started, was near.

Every year around this anniversary, I feel the weight of time on my shoulders. Lucy was my last direct link to the careless assumption that life would always go forward, and carry me with it.

When you lose the person who brought you into the world, you begin to look around for the things that will keep you tethered to it.

And at 64, there aren’t very many left.

I don’t mean to sound morbid. My life is actually quite joyous, filled with friends, work, the anticipation of distinct pleasures like an upcoming trip to my beloved Rome, a conference where I will be honored for simple decency, and many more lunches and dinners with my nephew who finally lets me post his photos on social media after a 10-year prohibition.

We’re not even Sicilian and the kid took an oath that Don Corleone would have appreciated.

All of this is to say that the last 12 years haven’t been very different from the ones that preceded them, except for this: finality is no longer hypothetical.

The end is coming, and there are many more stretches behind me than ahead of me on the journey. And that is OK, because the part that remains to be traveled is filled with as much and as many good things as I choose to collect and then scatter.

I no longer have to worry about how this will affect my reputation, or whether my job will be impacted, or whether I will have enough money put away for “that time.”

That time, dear reader, is here. And that is the one of the gifts my mother left me, when she joined my father, and her parents, and my brother Jonathan in the celestial summer house.

Her death taught me that while I can very easily worry about less important things like my weight, my hair and my teeth, there is absolutely no point in agonizing over what other people think of me.

The ones that matter are either already quite aware of who I am, or are waiting for me on the other side. And having that burden lifted from me is such a liberation that I can actually post videos of myself dancing in random bathrooms and smile. Who cares what strangers think?

My mother is not here to criticize, which she likely would, so I forge ahead and seize the moment.

I have written before about my mother’s death. It is the most immediate tragedy of my life. My father passed away when I was 20, over four decades ago. My brother died when I was 36.

I lost my grandmother at 25, and my grandfather was the first great loss, at 7. But Lucy’s passing was the last domino to fall,because I suspect I will be the next one to go.

And with that, I have become much more sensitive to this exceptional gift I’ve been given, the gift of time, of life, of living in health and in overall happiness.

I have had good fortune, better friends, and there has never been a lack of opportunity. Hope, as my friend says, is the last thing to die.

And so, as I commemorate the woman who was my alpha and will be my omega, the face I see before me seconds before ascending to meet her and the rest of the crew, I wish for all of you what I now have: an understanding that while this, too, shall pass, we can have a hell of a lot of joy holding on until it slips like a butterfly through sunlight from our fingers.

Copyright 2026 Christine Flowers