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When relaxed and released from the stresses surrounding her, Mama had a natural sense of humor. Out of the blue, she quipped how the doctors had given her a bikini cut. My mother never wore swimwear of any kind, much less a bikini, but she showed her two daughters how the stitches – and later the scar – were positioned in a shapely curve beneath her belly button, and so below the bikini line. Then in a moment of authentic and uncensored joy, she raised her gown upwards exposing her breasts and navel and exclaimed, ‘Look! It's a smiley face!’ We shared a moment of belly laughs that rippled throughout the room for several minutes until tears fell down our faces. Less than two months later, she died peacefully. I wish I could say she died at home in the sanctuary of her own bedroom. To be honest, I can only imagine what happened during her final week of life. She, my dad, and three of her sisters were flown by an emergency helicopter to a larger hospital in search of a miracle. Nothing could be done and according to the death certificate my mother died of pneumonia rather than the undiagnosed leukemia that ravaged her body. In those last moments of her life, I hope she was not wearing a pale blue hospital gown with the open back that tied clumsily with thin white strings, a garment she loathed. Her quiet legacy and destiny were to be remembered as the nurse dressed in white rather than the patient in blue.
