On the third afternoon, the golden Alaskan sunlight slanted across her bed.

The room was perfectly quiet.

Sarah opened her eyes one last time, looking directly into my soul.

“I love you, Mom,” she breathed.

“Always, my baby. Always.”

She took one more shallow breath. And then, none.

I sat beside her body for hours after the monitor was turned off. I held her hand as it grew cold, thinking of every age she had ever been. Six years old, with pigtails.

Twelve, gluing glitter onto a photo album. Thirty-five, dead in a hospice facility because a greedy, arrogant man had decided her suffering was a financial inconvenience and her death a liquid asset.