Addenda - Please forgive me for failing to include this; I was crying, as we often do, while I was writing it. My mother was abused as a child, and spent much of her life an angry, almost bitter woman. Her own father walked up to her and two of her four siblings when she was about eleven or twelve and said to them, "You are not my children." She married my dad after a period of rebellion, I suppose. Her mother was a bigoted woman who despised my father for his Sicilian heritage and being eleven years older than my mother, and much of my mother's adult life was spent trying to repair the rift between her mother and her.

She endured the bitter hatred of my father's mother as well. My father's father died when he was eight years old, and his mother blamed him illogically for his own father's death. Upon her own death, she had left a letter condemning him. It was the only time I saw my father cry. My mother and father tried to overcome these obstacles, but they were unable to compensate for my father's rage, which was born of his own pain and panic.

They never hated each other, despite their differences throughout the years, and reconciled emotionally shortly before he died. There was never any hatred in my home; there may have been anger and rage and fear, which we all needed to face and forgive, which we did. But there was also love, as I document in the story.

She contracted emphysema and lung cancer in May of 1993, and by the end of the summer, she had developed bone cancer which ultimately took her life on December 14 of that year. She went from angry and fearful to forgiving, sweet and full of faith through her own journey toward the completion of her life. She had made as much peace as she could; given her own diminishing abilities. She said the following in the same conversation I wrote about in my story; I included the following in one of my stories as "this author remembers..."

"I don't know what to do....Dougie...tell me (she had tears in her eyes) how do I know if I've forgiven everybody I need to?" This question was after she and my sister tried to contact everyone she remembered to apologize for her own transgressions. She knew she was dying long before the doctor told her, and she spent months writing and calling and forgiving and asking forgiveness.

She repeated the question...."How do I know if I've forgiven enough?

"Mommy...(I never called her anything but Mommy)..the fact that you can even ask that question makes me think you already have."

A dear friend just recently reminded me that when I look in the mirror, there's really three people looking back. I've made peace with how much I have taken after my father in my life. Now, looking back, I find myself at peace thanking God just how much I take after my mother as well. Thanks for reading. I love you all. Andrea