She could not imagine choosing the way her mother died, given a choice. But her mother had chosen it, had chosen, with her little bit of time left, every painful intervention, every last-chance effort, every surgical and injected and intravenous possibility of survival over comfort. When her mother asked and Lyssa said this is not what I would do if it were me, sometimes she meant you are brave, and sometimes she meant you are reckless and foolish, and sometimes she meant I can’t imagine what would be worth trying this hard to live for.
