Mom took her last breath just before six tonight with most of us "kids" holding her hand or stroking her hair. We will have calling hours on Monday and the funeral on Tuesday. We have a family cemetery that we created when my father died, so she will be buried beside him and not far from my second sister who died at 55. I am okay. I wondered how I would be, and I'm sure that I will have emotional moments-or I think so-but my Mom never cried so I might be more like her than I thought. I don't see death as an end, but just as a transition, and she is far better off than she was in that sick and aging body.