The mother is not dying exactly, but has reached a point in life where death is a familiar on the staircase.

It's reached the point of ridiculous. He's so not interested in all that.

We met Dr. Hall in such deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead.

My mother, Delle Hunter, was a physically small woman, yet she was the biggest person I’ve ever known. She had total focus, an attribute that deeply impressed me. She taught me by example that how we live impacts how we die. She lived a life of courage, beauty, and integrity; she died in the same manner.

He always thought that Touie's long illness would somehow prepare him for her death. He always imagined that grief anf guilt, if they followed, would be more clear-edged, more defined, more finite. Instead they seem like weather, like clouds constantly re-forming into new shapes, blown by nameless, unidentifiable winds.

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.