She had known, months in advance, that I would try to turn my guilt into a desperate war against the inevitable, and she had left me, in her own handwriting, the instruction I would need to stand down.

So I looked at her tired, peaceful face, and I let go of the fight, and I said, “I’ll arrange everything, Mom.”

We traveled four days later, with her hospice team’s full support — David driving, my mother and Maya and I together in the back seat.

And when we pulled up to her small adobe house, the neighbors were already waiting on the porch with warm food and fresh flowers and home-baked bread, and the house smelled exactly as it had in my childhood: pinon wood, lavender soap, fresh coffee.

She was home.