Even when I was a kid, she’d stop washing dishes if the sky turned pink. She’d stand at the kitchen window with a towel over her shoulder and say, “Come look, Daniel. You never get the same sky twice.”
Six months before our flight, she was diagnosed with lymphoma.
After that, our lives became a blur of hospital rooms, plastic chairs, pill bottles, doctors speaking in careful voices. Mom lost weight. She lost most of her hair. Some days she couldn’t walk from her bedroom to the kitchen without stopping.
But she never stopped looking up.
On the way to treatment, she still pointed out clouds shaped like animals.
“That one looks like a rabbit.”
“It looks like a shoe.”
“You have no imagination.”
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