Yesterday, the nurses gathered around my mother and began clapping, then singing, "It's your last chemo day...."

I remembered months ago when I first saw this performance. The woman in the arm chair next to my mother had a mortar board graduation cap on her head, crying as the nurses sang their contratulations. I thought to myself--how old she looks. She was younger than me, but Mom looked better at 65 than this woman did at 36. I didn't believe then that my mother could ever look like that.

Well, she does now. Chemo is brutal, more violent and life draining than we ever imagined on that first day. She has become smaller, thinner, slower. She has assumed that stooped over, tightened look of a prize figher protecting his belly from a well-directed fist. Her skin is papery and bruises with just a touch--bright purple streaks her arms. She is tired, and had begun to think that she might die from the chemo alone. It is time for this to be over.

On her last chemo day, Mom sat there, looking more like my grandmother than my mother. She said, "I am more proud of this graduation day than any others." I sat back to the side, tears in my eyes. I was proud, too.