feathery coral

The sun’s rays shimmered through the trees when my mom told me she intended to travel to Vermont to end her life instead of succumbing to the cancer proliferating in her lungs. She said she didn’t want to suffer or burden me, my brother, my father, and her sister. Her words, uttered casually on a beautiful spring afternoon, pierced me. My grief – barely contained in the wake of her unexpected diagnosis – bubbled over, and I fought the tears threatening to spill down my cheeks. I had assumed she would die at the home she shared with my father, with hospice offering pain relief, and her family surrounding her.

What do you say at such a moment?