It's for the mother of one of my oldest friends. We've known each other since the beginning of high school, and have known each other over half our lives, which means we've spent most of those years running in and out of each others' houses, beginning with our parents' houses and then our first apartments and on to her house with her husband and two little boys. So yes, I knew her mother and had more than a few meals and evenings with her as well. She'd been sick a long time, but one of the things that hits particularly hard here is that the one finishing blow, so to speak, wasn't the various cancers she'd been battling but that she'd made the decision to stop kidney dialysis, and that 11 years ago I lost my father to end-stage renal failure after he stopped dialysis. So I knew what my friend, and her mother, were experiencing as they were waiting out the final days, and there was just not a whole lot I could do for them other than offer support. But I spoke with her for a while this evening, and the family seems as at peace as they can be, given the circumstances.
But thank you for your kind words. If you guys decide to have the watch and post this weekend, have fun, and if not, I'll try to join in when you do put it together.