She had told me when I was a boy, "When people get old they ought to give them a pill". This went right by me, as did her casual remark 50 years later that she was never going to Hebron Hall, the skilled nursing home in her retirement community.

After 53 years of marriage, she had laid to rest an irritable, demented lover, and at the age of 84 had begun a new life alone, perhaps the best part of her life, as the family matriarch. In her final glorious bloom, she became a delightful and gracious hostess, holding forth from her small apartment, loving and mothering all comers.

She had rented a two-bedroom apartment on the sixth floor of a retirement complex, overlooking the treetops of a mature oak wood lot, and she had set up her oil painting studio in the extra bedroom. Although she had trained in oil painting at the Chicago Art Institute, she had lost some of her Figure drawingskills while she worked to raise a family during the Depression. But her landscapes were exquisite, and soon there appeared beautiful oils of green oak trees in summertime and snowy branches in winter.

But the clock continued to spin. She had more frequent dizzy spells and periods of overwhelming fatigue when she couldn't pull herself out of bed. Soon, she knew, would come the stroke.

But the coup de grace was different. While bending over to make the bed, she felt as though her back had broken. The young doctor said very little, only that it was "very bad arthritis". That was it. But she could not stand to live the rest of her life in such pain. In control to her final moment, she finished her last painting, straightened the apartment to perfection, put on her best robe, and sat down, for the last time, in her recliner.

I was working in the office when the long distance call came. She was found in her chair unresponsive, with fixed dilated pupils, hypotensive, in idioventricular rhythm. Did I want her intubated? No. Resuscitated? No.

Late that night after a long flight, I walked into her darkened hospital room. She was on her side, breathing softly. Her eyes were closed. She looked quiet, peaceful. I stroked her white hair. There was no response.

Later during that night the phone woke me. The nurse said, "Your mother's respiration stopped at 4:06 a.m".

We found her note the next day. She told how much she loved us all and how the young doctor had told her how very bad her back was.

This marvelous, loving woman with a mind still so bright was gone from our lives forever. Why did she do this to us, when she was still so alive, so vigorous? We still had so much more to talk about! Who would I talk to? Where was I when her back hurt so badly and she needed me? Why didn't she tell me about it? I would have told her that it would get better. But I was a thousand miles away.

Sammy, the undertaker and our family friend, came later. "It's about the death certificate," he said. "I guess they never did any blood tests so they really don't know the cause of death. I think it would be better if the death certificate said ‘heart attack.’ I'm going to ask the doctor to change it".

"Yes," I said. "I guess that's what it was, sort of a heart attack".