Holding onto your own mother, naked in the tub, as afraid of the warm water as she once was of running out of cigarettes, is a sobering moment for a daughter. As I carefully washed her wounds and awkwardly maneuvered her birdlike body out of the tub, I thought, This is what my body will look like. This is my future. My second thought? Who will be there to take care of me?

I'd always considered myself capable. Strong. After all, I ran a department in one of the world's largest media companies. But it didn't take but a day for me to admit that housewives and mothers had the most grueling jobs in the world. Back in the city, I'd take a cappuccino break at 10 a.m., to chat with my co-workers about the latest exhibit at the Met. Now, by midmorning, I'd already gotten my mother roused from a fitful sleep, figured out which medicines to sneak into her oatmeal, dressed her, done the dishes, gone food shopping -- and started planning for lunch.

Mom: What's this?
Me: It's bean and vegetable soup. I made it from scratch.
Mom: I hate soup.
Me: You love soup. I made it just the way you used to. Just taste it. You'll like it.
Mom: I want ice cream. And a cigarette.

My mom didn't stop smoking until she went into the hospital, and then it was only because we wouldn't buy her cigarettes. Smoking was her religion. She was the Mother Teresa of the Temple of Lucky Strikes. "I don't even want to smoke," she insisted during our stay together. Until the morning I came downstairs to find a lit cigarette in her hand - and her oxygen tank turned to high. "I just want to take one hit," she said, refusing to hand it over.

One of my earliest memories from childhood was my mother's morning routine: a cigarette and a cup of coffee to greet the day. Now, it belonged to me. Strangely, it made me closer to my mother than anything else ever could. At last, after years of trying, I finally understood something about Stella.

Most days, we just talked, which, for us, was unusual. Before the cancer, our conversations were pretty much limited to: "You gotta eat more lasagna. The cheese will keep you regular." Now, she'd remember a good day from my childhood or the way my dad liked to call me Lady Jane. One Sunday she even made it with me all the way to the ocean's edge even though she "never did much like the beach." Small victories. As good, and as easy, as a slice of pie.

After nearly two months, and despite my cooking, my mother was well enough to return to my sister's care, freeing me to return to my life in the big city, to my own green field of denial. Before I left, she told me she loved me in the only way she knew how. She shrugged and said, "I got used to you. But you have to go, right?"

A few months later, we celebrated my mother's 83rd birthday. She was strong enough to beg me for a cigarette when she caught me outside, sneaking one for myself. I looked at her -- a gnarled, white-haired child -- asking her baby daughter for the one thing left that gave her any real pleasure. I hesitated, and then shook one from the pack.

That night, Stella went into the hospital. Three days before Christmas, I was called to her deathbed.

It was the longest night of the year -- December 21. They played an endless loop of Christmas carols at the nurse's station. I tried to say all those things they say in the movies over the words of "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer." It was a moment Stella would have appreciated.

Just as I did when I was a child, I laid my head on her breast, close enough to hear her heart beat, as soft as the flutter of wings.

When she was finally still the nurse came and I asked for a moment. I peeled off all the band-aids stuck to her skin, as thin as crumbling parchment. I combed her hair. She never wore it neat. This was my own small triumph.

My brother came for me and we went outside. Dawn was breaking, bathing everything in a steel gray. I thought of that tub she painted and laughed. Then we each lit a cigarette. For Stella.

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