That spring afternoon, three months on, I walked down the hallway of the restored house toward the master bedroom on the main floor, carrying a tray.

The room had been completely renovated, and it was the opposite, in every possible way, of the basement my mother had been kept in.

Where the basement had been dark and damp and cold, this room was full of light.

There was a comfortable state-of-the-art medical bed, and soft linen curtains that moved gently in the spring breeze, and floor-to-ceiling windows that caught the warm afternoon sun and let it pool across the floor.

And sitting in a comfortable armchair by the window, wrapped not in a winter coat but in a soft blanket, with a book in her lap and the sunlight on her face, was my mother.