On Death and Dying: My Unexpected Journey to the Western States 100
When I went to Florida a month ago, I packed running clothes and a dress. She had pneumonia (again), but something just hadn’t sounded right when I talked to her the day before. It was a Wednesday morning. I said that Thursday night I was going to let her be scared and vulnerable and small, and then on Friday I was going to talk to her doctors first and then have one last “come to Jesus” talk with her about the weight and her health. I thought I was going to go for an early morning run on Friday and wear a DRESS. I thought I was going to walk into the room with the juice and the root beer she had been asking for for a week, and she was going to look up and say, “Oh Starrie, you look so pretty.” Forty hours later, I would be on the floor of the ICU in my pajamas, still holding my dead mother’s hand. It wasn’t an idyllic relationship. It was often painful, filled with the things that both of us wanted it to be, but that had been robbed by the alcohol, the cocaine, the addi...