My mom was the linchpin of our family. Her life had been built around "her girls" as she called me and Lizzie. Later, the focus shifted to her and my stepfather, Bob's, grandchildren. She was a Pilates instructor who treated her work as a calling, giving free instruction to teenagers with scoliosis, overweight people who couldn't afford regular lessons or anyone else whose "energy" she liked. She took better care of herself than anyone I've ever known. She loved all physical activity. She was a beautiful woman and she knew it.

When she was diagnosed with lung cancer in February 2003, Mom showed an instant -- and often myopic -- determination to survive. She did not want to die and she made it clear to her doctors that no regimen should be considered too aggressive. She set out on a course of treatment that ultimately spanned three surgeries, at least five rounds of chemotherapy and radiation and a two-month coma from which we were told she would not awake. (She did.) Dispersed on opposite coasts, my sister and I traveled constantly to our mother's house in Tucson, Ariz. We barely kept our marriages intact. Mom's illness became our life.

Mom radiated fear throughout her illness. Yet she cut off any discussion that did not assume a complete and total recovery. Once, when my sister brought to my mom's bedside an old photo album, my mom told her she didn't want to look through it. And then Mom slid her Mac onto her lap and logged on to eBay. It was obvious to me, Lizzie and Bob that she was retreating into her computer -- a lot.

She died on June 24, 2005. She was 60.

Read it all from the front page of today's Wall Street Journal.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine

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