Walking up the stairs to the front door, I could see her through the large picture window that graced the front of the large A-Frame house.

She seemed unaware of me standing there and seemed to be talking to someone outside my view. Even with her hair missing and her body ravaged from the cancer treatments she still was so beautiful. I paused for a moment to watch her face animate as she got caught  up in the story she was sharing.

She looked flirtatious, giddy, and almost young again. It was the first time since she had been released from the hospital 2 weeks earlier that I had seen her like her old self. Seeing her that way made my heart leap with hope. She looked as if a recovery might be possible.

She reached up a hand to push bangs, that were no longer there, back from her face. A girlish habit that she still seemed to be unable to let go of. She seemed so enthralled of her conversation's partner , I found myself straining to see who was in the room with her.

The only people, besides family that had been around since her release was the Hospice nurses. My brother and I called them the "angels of death" because their conversations always dealt with my mothers passing. We had been informed about which medicines we were to give when that final moment arrived.

 My mother had buried my father 2 years earlier from the same horrendous disease. He had been the love of her life and his leaving had been harder for her to endure than the indignities of the cancer treatments.

Since the diagnosis of her illness, my brother and I had taken turns staying  with her. We would watch endless hours of food shows with the sound roaring while she seemed lost in some other dimension. During the day she was quiet and stoic in her pain, but at night she moaned in her sleep, a sad weak moan as she shifted against the crisp white sheets. Her body had seemed to be giving up the fight, but today, looking through the window I felt elated that she looked better, as if she had found her desire to live.

Focusing again on the glow that radiated from her , I rushed through the door to see who had caused her to smile, giggle and look for those long lost bangs. When I opened the front door, my mother looked toward the door and covered her mouth in the way a small child might do if caught in something naughty. Becky, the hospice, nurse, entered the living room from  the kitchen.

"Oh is it that time already?"  She asked excited her time on duty was over.

I walked over to the cold impersonal hospital bed that caged my fragile, beautiful mother.

"Hi mom, " I bent down to kiss a papery cheek and caress her hand. My mother's eyes shone brilliant and she had a rosy blush on her cheeks. "What were you telling Becky?"

Becky went to the couch to gather her belongings and answered with her back to me."Oh we weren't talking, I thought she was asleep, I was straightening up the kitchen."

While Becky answered I never took my eyes off my mother. Her eyes looked mischievous, her whole body seem to vibrate with electricity.  "Mom , I saw you through the glass, you were joking with someone, you were laughing, who were you talking to?"

Her girlish grin widened and with a clarity I hadn't seen in weeks, she looked me int he eyes, squeezed my hand with strength that belied her condition, and said in an excited breath.

"Your father, you just missed him, but he said he's coming back for me."