Six months later, on a warm bright afternoon with the spring sun falling golden over the patio, I was in the garden building a trellis against the fence, and my mother, Evelyn, was sitting in the shade of a small wooden gazebo I had put up, wrapped in a soft wool blanket with a porcelain mug of tea steaming beside her.

I stopped what I was doing and just looked at her for a moment, the way you do when you are trying to memorize a thing you were once afraid you would lose.

She wore a cream cardigan over a floral dress, her dark hair neatly pinned back, and her cheeks carried a healthy flush that had not been there a year ago.

She was not coughing.