Everyone thinks their life is unique. But of course, to each person, life is unique. 

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At our rehearsal dinner, my husband made a speech looking forward to our life together, highlighting one attribute of mine he was most attracted to: loyalty. Before marriage, and indeed for the first two years of it, that loyalty was given to my original nuclear family of four, and in particular to my mother, Nan.

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Nan was a hoot. She was loud, she was a feminist, she never shied away from a lively debate. She ate cake for breakfast, believed education could solve the world's problems, kept friendships alive for a lifetime. She also selflessly battled breast cancer for eight years. 

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Yes I wrote a another memoir about cancer, but it's really about life, and life is so much more than cancer. It's about dying Christian as a genetically Jewish woman; how jumbled faith affected my beliefs about genetic testing and what I studied in school; what that faith meant for my mother as she reckoned her soul in the days before death. It's about the life and love that happens between a mother and daughter when they know time is of the essence. It's about how a constant stream of medical tests colored what should have been the most carefree years of my life, resulting in rising anxiety for my personal safety as well as a multiplying of IBS incidents that happen to humorously plague my family. 

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My memoir shows the gentle unraveling of mental stability that a long-fought terminal illness subjects to its caretakers. It takes a deep dive into the micro-world families create in the final weeks of a loved one's life: the isolation; the support offered from afar; the shutting in and shutting down of time, space and bodily function.