‘We had a family movie night. Well, let me take that back. My family had a movie night, while I sat on the floor trying to match the right lids to the right markers and put books back into bins.’

“Then I got up and made brownies, because I felt like brownies would make my family happy. Then I did the dishes because, well, I felt like I needed to do the dishes. Then I served everyone the brownies. Then I waited and collected their dirty brownie dishes.”

‘At 80 and terminally ill, she was self-conscious of how she looked. ‘They’ll think you’re a rich, eccentric old Hamptons lady,’ I told her. Having aspired to be one, she was happy with that.’

“We wanted to give her one ‘last hurrah’ before the end of her life. A police officer told my father of a place he just HAD to take my mother. ‘People find it only if they’re lost. It will remind her of Ireland.’ I pulled over. There, laid out, was horizon as far as her eyes could see. She was seeing the ocean she had crossed all those years earlier, for the very last time.”

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