It has been four (4) months since my mother, Ethel, died. She left this world on October 13, 2005, but she left her family long before that.

She left us very slowly, very gradually, literally inching further and further away until she finally retreated into a little corner of her own mind, her own universe, where we could no longer connect with her.

And then I did something I never thought I could ever find myself doing: I wished that she would die.