Madeleine Fisher-Kern: Beauty

It's been just short of 20 years since she left to join beloved family members long gone. And though the outstretched hand backlit by a celestial light is something I don't believe in, I know for sure that is what she saw as she drifted away.

The hospital in Miami, which will go unidentified for reasons that I have not a good thing to say, was the setting for our last days together. Having finally been diagnosed with terminal cancer after a parade of AMA approved doctors couldn't diagnose her, she spent her final waking hours putting personal matters in order so that I wouldn't be burdened. She did that a lot when she was well...doing things for me, making my life easier. Being a single mother, having divorced my father years ago and relieving him of any responsibility, doing things for me took effort, relentless effort.

Mom lived in Miami Beach and I in Los Angeles. In the pre-hospital days, she had been experiencing pain, excruciating pain. She went to her doctor. Her doctor's lack of concern finally turned into enough concern to hospitalize her. I traveled to be with her. That's when the parade started...a line of white coats with certain specialties that earned them letters to add to the end of their names. They prodded her, manipulated her, questioned her, and walked away with little more than when they came into her room. They stuck her, X-rayed her, CAT scanned her, and MRI'ed her and to our relief, she was announced cancer free. No tumors. No masses. She was sent home. I too went home, leaving my thin and now frail mom as I had never seen her. But she was cancer free so she'd bounce back because that's what she does.

Weeks later, it was the pain again. More intense. So intense that even with my mother's superhuman ability to tolerate pain, this was intolerable. Her doctor put her into the hospital again. His nurse called me and informed me that they were going to do an exploratory surgery immediately. I made flight reservations. I got another call.

My mom had metastasized cervical cancer.

My mom was going to die. The indomitable beauty, the ex-Earl Carroll show girl with movie star looks, who aged with a grace that still left her beautiful, even as she greeted me in the ICU, even to the end, was going to die. The culprit - a wuss of a cancer that was treatable, curable, if only it had been diagnosed early enough.

She was 69 years old.