Not much to add. My mother is close to the end. She’s no longer speak­ing, eat­ing, even swal­low­ing water. She is grad­u­ally leav­ing behind her body, like a dis­carded exoskeleton.

The peo­ple at Mont­gomery Hos­pice have been extra­or­di­nary in giv­ing my mother, my fam­ily and me sup­port and solace in this time of suf­fer­ing. Casey House has cre­ated a wel­com­ing, shel­tered space where I’ve been able to find peace while accom­pa­ny­ing my mother through this pas­sage. I’ve fre­quently come home to rest and imme­di­ately gone back to the hos­pice because it offers a more mind­ful envi­ron­ment at this time. At home, I just get swept up into busy-​​ness in front of my computer.

Mom was at Judy's son's wed­ding in 2009

I thought that I was get­ting back into a groove, both with this blog and my yoga prac­tice, after the dis­rup­tion of my father’s death on Jan­u­ary 4. But this week, the other shoe feel: my mother (Lor­raine Smith) had a stroke and has been hos­pi­tal­ized. Her left side, includ­ing arm and leg, has been seri­ously affected to the point that she can barely get out of the hos­pi­tal bed with assis­tance. My daugh­ter, Stephanie, went to check up on her on Tues­day morn­ing and found her asleep in a wheel­chair in the kitchen. She imme­di­ately that some­thing was wrong with my mother and called the vis­it­ing nurse. By the end of the after­noon, there was mob of loved ones, friends and care­givers around her, try­ing to get the best option for her. My sis­ter, Judy, took her to urgent care at her clinic (Kaiser Per­ma­nente) and then to the hospital.

When I was with her last night, she spent a lot of time sleep­ing and couldn’t carry on a con­ver­sa­tion for long. That may just be the body try to heal the dam­age done to her brain. Today, we had a long ses­sion with the sup­port team at Holy Cross Hos­pi­tal to get a han­dle on her sit­u­a­tion. The team thought there was a good chance that my mother can pull through this cri­sis because of her tenac­ity demon­strated in pre­vi­ous ill­nesses and acci­dents. We will need to get her into a rehab cen­ter as soon as she’s strong enough, and then we have to have a plan to take care of her, either in a nurs­ing home, assisted liv­ing or her home.

A young min­is­ter and his wife smile on the future in 1947

One thing that we dis­cov­ered last year with her acci­dent (fell while pick­ing up the Sun­day paper, frac­tured pubic bone, shat­tered elbow, lots of scraps and bruises) is that she has Stage-​​IV breast can­cer. More than 25 years ago, she was diag­nosed and under­went surgery to remove the left breast and lymph nodes, radi­a­tion and hor­mone treat­ment, and rehab. Appar­ently, the sur­geon did not get all the can­cer (or it had already spread). Once she was taken off the hor­mone treat­ment after 10 years, the can­cer prob­a­bly became active and spread through her body. So the cancer’s been hang­ing around for 25 years, but has not com­pro­mised any vital organs. When she was given an x-​​ray after her fall, the doc­tors noticed a shadow in one lung, and deter­mined that the can­cer. She was put back on hor­mone treat­ment, and the drug has really beaten back the tumors.

So my mother has been bat­tling a lot of things over the past year or so. She’s 91 years old.

I thought that my mother had really done well before the stroke. She sol­diered through the events sur­round­ing my father’s death. In recent weeks, she con­cen­trated on get­ting her papers in order to set­tle Dad’s estate. She had reduced the num­ber of boxes of files stacked around her liv­ing room chair down to a handful.

And what about me?

Like I said, I want to get back to reg­u­lar yoga classes, to the gym for aer­o­bic train­ing, to a rou­tine that allows me to focus on writ­ing, read­ing, learn­ing, tak­ing pho­tos. I’ve put on an extra 5-​​8 pounds since Christ­mas. Oh yeah, and I want to get in eight hours a day of work so that I can dig myself out from under a huge back­log of work. I am so late on some tasks that it’s embarrassing.

I guess I’m ask­ing for a lot. But what I’m going to have to set­tle for is man­ag­ing each day as best I can, respond­ing calmly to the needs of my fam­ily, and seek­ing out quiet moments of mind­ful­ness. And in the evenings, spread out my mat on my study floor and release all the stress of the day. “Grace, ease and bal­ance,” that’s what my yoga prac­tice is about this year.