(Mom's L. L. Bean slippers! I had to take this picture even though it's a little too Wizard of Oz...but Mom would have laughed herself!)

This week mom is writing out her last will and testament again and again and again. Often she barely whispers, and gets very cross when we're not paying attention. She is not getting up to walk any more, I believe she is physically capable, but something in her brain is just misfiring, and it's too scary to try. Her perceptions of depth and sound and light are changing. Her eyes are sometimes cloudy and still. Her vocabulary? Still unbelievable. Last night she dictated this, verbatim:

"To my wonderful family and friends who always were ready to laugh and cry.

I've had the most beautiful life anybody could hope for and I thank you all.

(And the chance to write poetry for I don't know how many years. Maybe 55.

I have had, at the least, 85 years of good fun, good friends, and fine neighbors." (She will be 80 in November.)

I scribble it all down. Then she tells me I should keep the picture of that "very earnest lady" (the oil paint portrait of her when she was 14.) "No, I'm just being facetious," she giggles.

"Maybe tomorrow I'll be grey enough to figure out who my friends and family really are."

Then, as I am tucking her in, slowly pulling away to go to sleep for the night, she says: "You are getting more and more beautiful."

How does she do it?