When the nurse called to tell me that my mother was comatose, I hurried from my suburban home late one evening to be at her side.  Father had died some years earlier, and as a refugee had scrimped and saved leaving her with a substantial estate.  I lay beside her on her bed, gazing at her closed eyes, open mouth, parched lips, the jaw slackened with a sour breath emanating from slightly decaying teeth.  My mind drifted to early childhood years.  Memories of her beauty flashed before my eyes.  It was difficult to reconcile the present reality with these memories, creamy white skin (regularly cared for with cucumber applications for their astringent properties), luminous eyes and a shapely body.  Men had found her alluring.

     Oh Mom what ever happened to you?  Glancing once more at the mirror, I saw myself etched more clearly now-an aging apparition with wrinkled face, bags under the eyes, and gray thinning hair.  She likewise must have wondered, before a slow and agonizing descent into dementia, what had happened to her handsome little cherub of a boy.

     Ours had been a happy little twosome in France prior to the war years.  I remembered her teaching me to swim in the Mediterranean Sea during my father's "grande vacances" from his work as a chemical engineer.  During these vacations I often turned blue from delightful exposure to the chilly water.  She would bundle me up in a large warm towel, dry me off and preserving my modestly deftly slip me in a dry bathing suit.

     She had a certain sang froid.  Several years later, I was to appreciate this when she saved my life....