Update on Mom; thank you for all of the kindness

I drove back late Friday night from Illinois. I had a great visit with my mother, who has inoperable lung cancer. I played Jackson Browne's "The Pretender" disc repeatedly.

I would like to thank the many readers who posted comments of encouragement and offered their prayers and thoughts to my mother and our entire family. There is no greater gift. Thank you. I also would like to offer my best wishes to people who talked of losing their parents and about their parental relationships. Wow. I'm glad this blog has proven to be a sort of forum.

(I promise I will get back to the Bengals on Monday.)

Mom is doing as well as possible, given the diagnosis. She is tolerating the radiation treatment well. Oncologists are trying to shrink the four brain tumors, and the steroid she is taking to reduce brain inflamation is helping her balance and appetite. She has gained about five pounds to get back over 120.

She is sleeping well and enjoying the many calls, visits and cards she is receiving. We watched to White Sox beat Detroit on TV Wednesday night.

She wants no pity. She talked again of her full, rich life. She asked for prayers to better accept God's will with as much grace as possible. She continues to think first of other people. There is no better example for her children.

She is a wonderful patient. My sister-in-law, Karen, a registered nurse, is there around the clock. My younger sister, Lucy, who works as a surgical nurse at University Hospital, is headed up during Labor Day weekend to stay with Mom as relief for Karen. We are making arrangements for around-the-clock professional care with a local agency. Doctors are talking in terms of months as the prognosis.

It's easy to visit Mom. Even when her condition worsens, seeing her will still be a joy. My gratitude is profound.

She sent me home with a couple of slices of her homemade bread, which she is famous for among family and friends. She said it would be breakfast for me Saturday morning when I would be getting up early to see my oldest son, Pete, run in a cross country meet for Finneytown High School.

Mom is is down to the last loaf of what probably is the last batch of bread she will ever bake.

Instead of eating it, I have the bread in a sealed plastic bag. I put it in my freezer. I will thaw it and share it with my three children -- as a sort of communion and celebration -- when Mom is gone from this life.

Despite my many faults and shortcomings, I know this as fact as much as I know anything: Mom is headed to a better place. She will whisk through purgatory and on into heaven, where she will be reunited with her husband. Again, I know this as truth.

John and Elizabeth will have been apart long enough.