I put the car in reverse and looked over my shoulder as I began to hit the gas. From the corner of my eye, I saw my mother assume her nauseated pose, with shoulders hunched and head hung low. She reached for her car's supply of small garbage bags, having been placed there for just such a purpose.

I drove home carefully, mindful of bumps in the road, and praying that once she was home, in bed, the feeling would subside. We carried in groceries, Mom stubbornly carrying in too much, and set them on the long chest freezer just inside the door. She braced a palm against the unit and steadied herself. With my mother's typical calm, she shrugged out of her coat and let it fall to the floor saying, "I have to hang that up, but first I feel like I'm going to faint unless I lie down."

The proclamation left me shaking my head in wonder of her strength, and I hung her coat in the closet while she traipsed to her bed. I put away groceries and washed the grapes—the grapes my mother hesitated to get for me because last time she did I ate them in rapid succession all the way through and threw up for what seemed like an hour straight. My stomach is still muttering with it's arrogant bully's Brooklyn cabbie's accent, "...friggin' idiot..."

I took off my own coat and put it away before going to Mom, seeing what she needed, what she wanted me to do. I discovered her on the bed in tears. I knelt at her side and she cried, "I hate that I waste my days with you, feeling like this." I loosened her shoelaces and removed her shoes. She stood, crying still, and said, "I don't know how many days I have with you, I don't want them wasted, I want to be strong for you. I don't want this to be what you remember."

"You are strong for me," I told her. "And you're beautiful to me, everything about you is beautiful, even this. You're fighting by tooth and nail, and it's glorious." We embraced and she continued to cry.

"At least we can be here for each other," she said as I folded down the bedding. She climbed between the sheets and I nodded.

Wasted days...I don't think so. There is no time with my mother that I would dare throw away.