July 4, 2009. Her Last.

Her last 4th of July was spent in the hospital.  She was recuperating from surgery on her lungs.  They had grafted some skin from her thigh and used it to cover the hole left from her previous mastectomy.  All those trips twice per week for 8 weeks to Radiation Therapy had taken a toll on her skin.  It had burned off and thus creating a hole where some pieces of rib bones had been falling out.  She sat up the bed with IVs dangling down the sides of her bed and said to me this.  "Ma, you do realize this is my  last 4th of July."  I tried to say in a calm voice that it wasn't and that she would live to see many more.  She said, "Ma, I thank God for you."  "You, are here with me and that's all I need."  Meantime, her husband was out to who knows where and managed to stay away from the hospital and we didn't even hear from him.  PERFECT, for me.  I despised him.