"Someone Reads The Eulogy"

I mentioned this in an earlier post ("The End Is Near"), but I wanted to talk about it in further detail.

One day, about a month before my mom passed away, I was encouraging her to draw in her notebook like I did every time I came to visit. When all of a sudden, she turned the page and started writing. This is pretty unusual. By this time, she was having difficulty writing, so I was pretty shocked.

I was looking through her notebook yesterday when I found that page that she wrote almost 2 months ago:

It took me awhile to decipher it, but I'm pretty sure it says

1. Guests arrive
2. Someone reads the eulogy
This isn't about mourning, this is about celebrating her life.
After the burial, please gather at the

At this point, I remember her looking up at me and I asked her what she was writing. She didn't say anything, she just kept looking at me. I read the first two lines and got too scared to read the rest.

But now looking back on it, I can see how amazingly brave she was. At this point in her life, she couldn't walk or move her left arm. She had trouble eating, talking, and writing. She couldn't do very simple math problems anymore. Sometimes it seemed like she had the mental capacity of a 5 year old.

But then, out of nowhere, she would write things like this. And this would remind me that she was still the same person on the inside. She wasn't totally gone. She's still the most courageous person I have ever known. And I hate brain cancer for doing this to her.