When she was in hospice, her heart failing quickly while ours beat on and on, we watched the birds outside her window. The kids came and went, loving and devastated, but also busy with work and school. My mom dozed while my dad read the paper and I mended my jeans. Sometimes she was in pain, and it was awful. Sometimes I looked at take-out menus with my dad and she grinned at us from her weird bed. Her strength and coordination failed, and I climbed in next to her to help with her phone, using her thumb to unlock the screen like it was a tool in my own hands. “I’m still a person!” she said,
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