mothers and daughters

Remember Geocities and the early web--when people poured their hearts out amidst comic sans and crudely animated gifs? One pioneering blogger was Denise Cooper, who for several years kept a daily online diary about her life, her family, and especially caring for her combative and agitated demented mother in her home. In our opinion its one of the great diaries--a real slice of American life. Our excerpt is naturally somewhat artificial,and edited for space and continuity. The original is well worth surfing for. Ironically, while Ms. Cooper wrote frequently about how difficult it would be for her to deal with her mother's death, she ended up (spoiler alert) blogging about her own fatal lung cancer up until her very last days, and her mother survived her by several years.

Yes, she taught me the jitterbug and she taught me how to help her die.

I was not with my mother the day she was diagnosed with terminal abdominal cancer. She called me from the hospital to inform me of the horrible prognosis that she had been given; I had suffered a bout of insomnia the night before, therefore, I was barely coherent when the phone rang and I answered.