“I’m right here, Mom,” I said.

“I’m right here.

I’m not going anywhere.”

She looked at me, and for a moment there was such clarity in her eyes, such presence, that it did not seem possible she was leaving.

Then, slowly, with an effort that seemed to cost her nearly everything she had left, she lifted one hand from the blanket and pointed.

She pointed at the old, torn pillow beneath her head, the one she had held in her lap that afternoon, the one she had slept on for a lifetime.

And she gathered the last of her breath, and she whispered, so faintly I felt the words more than heard them: