I'm so sorry, Sabine.

The last clear memory I have of my mother, who died of liver cancer when she was only 51, was at breakfast on the morning I returned to university to begin my second year. She was sitting in her accustomed place at the head of the dining-room table, drinking tea from her special cup and staring at the top of my head with an odd expression on her face. Suddenly she said, in a dreamy voice, "Your hair looks just like the feathers of a baby chick, yellow and sticking straight up." Two weeks later she went back to the hospital for the last time, and four days after that she was dead.

I'm actually very grateful that I never saw her again after that last breakfast, for that is how I remember her, gazing at me over the edge of that cup. Perhaps if you focus your thoughts about your mother on your last evening together, when you had coffee and a hug, it will eventually overcome the memory of finding the husk that she left behind when she went to a better place.

Ch