Reading further along in my journal, I am reminded that the wife and mother chose not to do chemo or radiation. I don't know about the other woman, though the rapidness of her death might suggest the same. For me, somehow, there was no question of not doing it. It just seemed my path. I was not ready to go. Others may be. It is not to judge, only to notice how it felt to me when the young woman looked at me so lovingly, saying she saw in me her mother as she would have been if she lived.
I feel a responsibility in that, a gift.