This is me and my sister Nancy in July, 2009. She's on the left. Eleven years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation, she thought she had it beat. About six months after her first "good" test results it metasticized to her brain. In the past several years she's undergone two conventional brain surgeries and a gamma knife surgery. Her oncologist told her she is in stage four and to just go home and wait until it's time to call hospice. She found another oncologist. She's undergoing her umptyninth round of chemotherapy now, still with her chin up, but not as high as before.

We talk on the phone several times a week. She has slid into a an understandable depression. We talk about her current health situation, but mostly we talk about that winter Daddy built us those igloos, or the summer we all went to Colorado and she jumped in the river. We wander around on the memory lane where her daughters were little girls who loved to climb trees and fish. Sometimes I hang up the phone after one of our calls and put my face in my hands and cry, already mourning for the part of her that is already gone, aching for the part of her that is still here and so wants to live.