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ON NEW YEAR'S EVE DAY,
Maggie calls and asks me to come to the hospital and bring her home. All treatments have been stopped and hospice has been ordered. I make the journey north to Dartmouth Medical Center again, glad to escape a New Year's Eve party, glad to be alone in the car and, even though I am afraid of what lies ahead, grateful to be on my way to Maggie once again. I arrive just as she is being taken into surgery, to have a port put into her lungs so the fluid can drain when she's at home. The doctors hope that this will give her some relief for a while longer, although no one will expand on what “a while longer” means. Days? Weeks? No one can—or will—say.

I pack up her meager belongings—a book, a drawing pad, her coat, her boots caked with mud. Then I sit in the uncomfortable chair by the window where I have sat and slept and waited many times before, prepared to wait again. But soon Maggie is wheeled back into the room. The procedure didn't work. They couldn't even start. Her left lung is encased in a layer of tumor cells so dense that the chest tube could not penetrate. She will have to go home without the drainage port. She is crestfallen. This is the last procedure she will receive, the last in a long line of failed attempts to beat the cancer. The last straw. She dissolves into tears. Several of her nurses rush to comfort her, as does the doctor on call, a young resident holding down the fort over the holiday. I leave Maggie in
their care and go to the hospital's pharmacy to pick up a boatload of pain medication that home hospice will administer.

When I return, Maggie is bundled up and waiting in a wheelchair. The resident is kneeling by her, talking softly and stroking her head. The nurses—Maggie's champions for so long—cry as we leave. Her favorite nurse, a burly man with a raunchy sense of humor, pushes her through the halls and outside to my car. He leans over and whispers into her ear. Then he makes a little nest for her in the backseat of the car with blankets and pillows he has poached from the hospital. He picks Maggie up in his arms and they weep. He settles her into the backseat, slams shut the door, and stands at the curb as we drive away.

I sense Maggie taking stock of what is happening. This is the last time she will be at the hospital. The last time we will make the beautiful drive south. The sun is setting on this last day of the year, sending rays of pink light through the steely gray sky. As I drive, she sleeps, she coughs, she wakes, she vomits. I pull to the side and clean her up, drive again, stop again. It is dark and frigid when we arrive home. I am worn out, and she is barely alive.

That night, Norah and Hayden and their partners come to be with her. As I make dinner, they gather in the living room, surrounding Maggie. She's just a little heap on the couch, tufts of hair sticking up on her head—her face thin and flushed. She is hooked up to an oxygen tank that makes a continual whishing sound. I bring everyone bowls of soup, and Maggie watches us eat—her big brown eyes bigger than ever and alarmingly bright. Now that she's home, she's not as drugged; she's awake, alert, and in pain. After everyone has eaten, I clear the plates and the kids stand to leave, but Maggie calls us to her.

She wants to tell us a few things, she says. And then she speaks,
directing most of her talk to Norah and Hayden. In a torrent of words, in between coughing, she tells her kids how much she will miss them, how sorry she is to be leaving them too soon, how proud she is of them. She tells them how to be good parents, good partners. She unburdens her heart and lists the things she is sorry for. She reminds them of all the people who will be there for them when she is gone.

She tells us how she wants to die, who she wants in the room, where to spread her ashes. She tells us what her favorite nurse whispered to her today as she left the hospital: that he's seen a lot of people die, and the ones who loved the biggest and lived the fullest are the saddest to leave, because they are lovers of life. She tells us that she is a lover, and that we should be lovers.

“Love comes first,” she says. “Love each other and love every clod of dirt and every tree on earth.” She stops talking to cough and then to catch her breath. She closes her eyes. We wait.

Her eyes open. “Trees,” she says. “Do you know how much I love trees? And how proud I am of you, Hayden, to be taking care of forests? And you, Norah, for taking care of the land? I couldn't have better kids.” Her eyes grow rounder and brighter as she speaks, until she finally exhausts herself and falls asleep midsentence. The kids leave, and Oliver takes Maggie up to bed. I drag myself into the guest room, into the bed where I have spent so many nights. How many more nights will I spend here?

Be lovers, Maggie told us. Love the earth, and love each other.
Love comes first
, she said. Suddenly I realize that Maggie has solved one of the great riddles of all times: What came first, the chicken or the egg? Neither. Love came first. In the beginning was love, and therefore we should put it first too.

There's something I have to do. I take out my computer. I notice
it's a few minutes before midnight and I recall that it's New Year's Eve. I write an e-mail to Jo. I tell her all about what happened today. I tell her that Maggie wants her to be there when she dies. I tell her I have done the best I can, and even though I haven't done a perfect job, somehow it's been what Maggie needed. I ask for her forgiveness in all the ways I have not upheld my end of our sisterhood, and I promise, in Maggie's name, to do better. I write it as a prayer, and send it off as the old year comes to an end.

TWO DAYS AGO MAGGIE WAS
close to death. Or so we thought. She was under the weight of morphine, going in and out of consciousness, sleeping for long stretches. Her breathing was rapid as her lungs filled with water, squeezing the breath right out of her. The hospice nurse told us to focus on making her as comfortable as possible.

And then, this morning, she sits up in bed, and in a fit of lucid consciousness and hummingbird energy, she says she needs to make sure that the last of the
Gone to Seed
prints are properly framed before we bring them to the gallery.

“We?” Oliver asks.

“Yes,” Maggie says. “I want to go to the gallery and see how they hang the show before Thursday. It's Wednesday today, right?”

“Jesus, Maggie,” I say. “How do you know what day it is?”

“We don't have much time, so let's get busy.” That's her answer. She eats two tiny bites of eggs, and then we trundle through the snow to the studio, and join the friends who have been working around the clock to frame the prints for the opening of
Gone to Seed
, which indeed will happen on Thursday. In a show of super-hummingbird strength, Maggie drags herself around the studio, wheeling the oxygen tank behind her, overseeing the framing.

The next day, after a sleepless night of pain and coughing,
Maggie insists on going to the gallery. Oliver and I bundle her up—all ninety pounds—and carry her into the ten-degrees day, put her in the car, and travel down the highway to the gallery. Her kids meet us there. I have a photo of that day—of Maggie in a wheelchair, with a vomit bucket in her lap, in a down coat that fit her last winter but now seems to have been made for a giant. For an hour, she is full of life, joyful to be viewing her artwork—the botanical plants, with their dried stalks and dying leaves and the swash of smashed berry paint soaring off the edge of the frames.

But soon she tires. In the car driving back she becomes violently ill, retching, over and over, into a bucket, and talking to people who aren't in the car.

When we get home, I go up to the bedroom, change the sheets, puff the pillows, tidy the room, and then Oliver brings Maggie upstairs and we settle her into bed. I sit with her. Outside the sky is silver and streaked with the sun's setting light. A flurry is falling. The snow catches the dying light, and for a moment everything sparkles, and everything feels complete.

Maggie rests for a while and I get up to leave, thinking she has fallen asleep. But she opens her eyes and looks at me.

“Now what should I do, Liz?” she asks. “Just wait?”

“Yeah, now you just wait. That's all you have to do.” I sit back down.

She's been fighting the cancer for so long, she doesn't know how to stop. She's been fighting not to leave—her family, her home, her land, her art, all of it. The life she has loved here on earth.

“The gallery show is so beautiful, Maggie,” I say. “You should be proud.”

“Yeah,” she says. “So beautiful.”

“How did you figure out how to make those huge prints?” I ask. “They're different from anything else you've ever done. How did you do that?”

“The same way I did other things that scared me.” It takes all of her effort to string the words together.

“How?” I ask.

But she's fallen asleep. A few moments later she opens her eyes and says, “A mockingbird told me. That's how I did it.”

“A mockingbird?”

“No, not a mockingbird.” She closes her eyes again and her breath is quick. “Not a mockingbird,” she says again. “I mean the kind of bird who tells you how. That bird,” she pants. “The bird who tells you how . . . tells you how to do the things that scare you.”

She's been speaking in riddles for several days now. Often she makes little sense. Sometimes I think there is hidden meaning in what comes out, and sometimes I think she's speaking from another world, or maybe it's the morphine. But this evening she has no morphine in her, and she's been present and strong all day.

So I ask her, “Is the bird here now?”

“I have to go find it,” she says. She closes her eyes and falls into a fitful sleep.

I sit in the bedroom with her for a long time. In the dimming light, I watch the blood pulsing in her neck. My blood. Her blood. Maggie-Liz. I think back to when millions of stem cells were harvested from my bone marrow and transplanted into Maggie's bloodstream. How they took up residence, duplicated, so that she could live. And live she did—with more Maggieness than she ever had before. I try to make sense of it all—how becoming one with
each other made us both more confident in being ourselves, and how when she dies, part of me will die too.

I pick up Maggie's hand and hold it gently. “Take some of me with you, Mags,” I whisper. “And leave some of yourself behind.” The night covers us. Maggie stops panting and her sleep deepens. I hope she finds “the kind of bird who tells you how” and that it instructs her in the art of flying into the light.

THE NEXT MORNING, OLIVER TELLS
me that Maggie spent most of the night coughing and in pain. The hospice nurse visits, has a long talk with Maggie, and adjusts the dose of the pain medications. I go to town, to fill the prescriptions at the pharmacy and to get away, to clear my head. I run into a friend of Maggie's in the grocery store, a fellow nurse who has cared for many dying people. I tell her that Maggie has been struggling, fighting for life in one moment and wanting to die in the next.

“She doesn't seem to know how to do either,” I say.

“Oh, yes, she does,” says the friend. “Don't worry. She's doing important work now. She's completing the curriculum.”

“The curriculum?”

“The life-review curriculum. She's learning in both directions now—finishing the past and looking into the future. And knowing Maggie, she's getting her PhD.”

We chat some more. I leave the store and get into my car. There's a knock at the window. Maggie's friend is standing in the freezing Vermont air, her breath billowing like clouds. I open the window.

“One more thing,” she says. “It may take Maggie a long time at the very end. She may lie still for hours, and you may wonder what to do, but just let her take her time. She'll be completing the curriculum. She'll know when to leave.”

That night, Maggie suffers the kind of pain that morphine can't
touch, and the terror of near drowning in her waterlogged lungs. In the morning she tells Oliver that today is the day she wants to die. That she is going to take the death-with-dignity pills. They stay upstairs for a long time, and when Oliver finally comes down, I take one look at him and I know that Maggie has made her decision.

“Is she sure?” I ask him.

“Yes,” he says. “I think she is.” He sits at the table, puts his head in his hands, and weeps. I put my arms around him and we cry together.

“She said the most amazing thing,” Oliver says. “She said, ‘Yesterday would have been too soon, but tomorrow will be too late.'”

I go upstairs. “Today's the day, Liz,” Maggie says when I come into the bedroom.

“Why today?” I ask.

“Because yesterday would have been too soon,” she says, “but tomorrow will be too late. That's what came to me last night. I just kept saying it over and over to myself. I can't go on like this one more day. Too much pain, too much coughing. And I finished everything I had to do. And it will be too late if I wait much longer. It's time.” Her tone is strong. What had felt before like anger now feels like courage. What had felt like frantic energy when she roused herself to finish the prints and visit the gallery now feels like a wind blowing in from another world.

Oliver comes back upstairs. We tell Maggie we understand and we'll help her; we'll stand by her. She asks us to call her kids, their partners, and Katy and Jo. She wants everyone to gather by one o'clock in the afternoon. That's the time she has chosen, and so that's what we do. One by one, her team arrives. The wind from the other world whips around the house. It fills Maggie's sails. She
moves through the rooms putting sticky labels on furniture and paintings that she wants people to have. The labels fall off as she leaves each room, blown by the same wind that propels Maggie onward. She sits at the kitchen table and writes letters to friends. And finally she asks her kids to bring her upstairs. “But let me walk by myself,” she commands.

They make their way up the stairs, Maggie leading, followed by Hayden and Norah, and they disappear into her room. The rest of us remain downstairs, in the absolute wilderness of this unimaginable journey.

Two o'clock, three. We wonder what to do. Four o'clock. The day is almost done. I decide to go upstairs. And there they are, three beloveds, holding on to each other in the boat of Maggie's bed.

“Liz,” Maggie says.

The kids get out of the boat.

“Now what?” she asks.

“Is it time? Are you ready? Do you want to do this?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “I just don't know how.”

I think of that bird Maggie spoke of, “the kind of bird who tells you how.” I beg it to come show me the way. I have no idea what to do. I wait. The kids wait. Maggie waits.

“OK, here's the plan,” I say. “Why don't you take some time alone with each of us. Just a few minutes with each person. Does that sound good?”

“I'll start with you,” Maggie says to me. The kids leave. I sit on the bed. I take her hands.

“Are you scared?” I ask her.

“No,” she says. “I'm ready. I'm ready to go. I need to go. Don't make me cry. Help me go.”

“I will,” I say, forcing back the tears. We look into each other's eyes. There's no need for words. I have said everything there is to say to her: I love you. I respect you. Thank you. I will take care of your kids. She has said everything there is to say to me. We are each other's perfect match, now and forever. I lean down and kiss her lightly.

“OK, now ask Katy to come up,” she says. And one by one, the sisters, the kids, their partners, and finally Oliver trek up and down the stairs, saying their good-byes. And at six o'clock, with the sun down and the night coming on, Oliver calls us all to Maggie.

We stand around her bed. She sits up, vibrating with adrenaline and the wind from the other world. Her eyes are huge. She is coughing violently from the water pooling in her lungs. She can barely breathe.

“Help me do this,” she whispers to us—to her brilliant and brave children, to her devoted Oliver, and to the three sisters, arms around each other, helpless with love for her. Oliver hands her the first of the pills and liquid, and she takes them. When the coughing subsides, she takes more. And more. Until the full dose is done and she leans back on the pillows and looks around at us one last time. Then she fixes her gaze on the candles burning on the windowsill, and for the first time in weeks, she stops coughing, her breath becomes even, the lines of pain in her face soften, and she relaxes into sleep.

For the next hours we keep vigil by her bed, her boat. Maggie breathes steadily, and although her body never moves, not even a twitch on her face, her eyelids flutter, she is warm to the touch, and there is a concentrated intensity about her. And for the next hours, she becomes the hummingbird again, full of energy and determination, working hard on the curriculum.

We go in and out of the room, reconfiguring the team. Someone strokes Maggie's head; someone says I love you. We make tea. Sometimes we sit downstairs; sometimes we crowd back around Maggie, sure that the time has come. She inhales sharply, and then a long exhalation, and then a gap of time when nothing more happens. Is this it? Has she gone? But then she gasps. And the steady breathing begins again. The candles flicker in the window.

After another hour and several false alarms—the sharp in-breath, the long out-breath, the gap in time, the gasp, the return of the breathing—Norah suggests that maybe Maggie needs us to leave her alone. “She said she needed space these last few days,” Norah says. “She probably needs it now.” And so we leave Maggie and Oliver in their room and spread out, looking for places to sleep. We settle in, and a profound silence bears down on the house.

I am just about to drift off when I feel someone standing in the doorway of the guest room. It's Jo.

“Can I get in bed with you?”

“Of course,” I say.

She gets under the covers, and we hold onto each other.

“I'm sorry,” Jo whispers. “I'm sorry I blamed you. I just wanted to be with her. I just needed someone to blame it all on.”

I hold my breath as she is talking. I feel Maggie with us. I feel her completing the curriculum and passing the torch to us.

“We're good, Jo,” I say. “We're good now.”

And then Oliver is at the door. Maggie is gone, he says.