Of all the hard memories from my mother’s long, slow decline, this is the one that rises repeatedly to the surface of my mind.

I was sitting at the office writing my column, on a countdown to the 4:00 p.m. deadline,  my fingers poised over the keyboard looking for that final sentence to wrap it all up, when the phone rang.

The caller i.d. showed that it had come from the long-term care facility where my mother was now living. So deadline be damned, I picked up anxiously. The doctor on the other line told me that my mother had come down with pneumonia. And then asked a question that startled me: “Do you want us to give her antibiotics?”

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