Editor’s note: The Diapason offers here a feature at our digital edition—two soundclips. Any subscriber can access this by logging into our website (thediapason.com), click on Magazine, then this issue, View Digital Edition, scroll to this page, and click on each <soundclip> in the text.
I am writing this in early February about two weeks after my mother died at the age of ninety-two. Various aspects of my mother’s journey over the last few months have preoccupied me as well as the rest of my family. She seemed well, though in need of significant changes in her life situation. But then various serious health challenges, all of which had been around for a long time, caught up with her. In the end, her death at that particular time was sudden and unexpected, though on a longer arc it wasn’t surprising.