“I won’t die on a Tuesday.”
    This was my mom’s final demand from her deathbed. She was about to lose her war with a cancer that raged through her cells, but not before making  one last stand against the enemy she had fought so aggressively within the battlefield that was her body.
    It had been a year since the invasion began, and the family was immediately drafted to help mom destroy an enemy that had already beaten two of her siblings and her father.
    It began Monday morning when I got the phone call from my sister. “You better come quickly, Mom has gone into some kind of state and Dad can’t reach her,” she said in a frantic, tearful voice.
    I slammed down the phone. I was an hour away from her, and I had to get my two small children ready before I could go. My mind was racing, but in a 25-minute whirlwind,  we were out the door.
    I backed out of the driveway and checked my watch for the 50th time. If I pushed it a little, I would make the trip in 45 minutes. How many times had I made that Iowa City to Moline trip over the past year? Too many to count.
    The sun was shining in my face, and I was aware that although this was only May 2, summer was not far off. The doctors had told us they could get her through the summer. The tears welled up in my eyes when I thought about it.
    Again, I looked at my watch. It had only been 15 minutes; the trip was taking too long. I pushed the speedometer to 70 mph and turned my thoughts to tactical duties because a soldier could not cry when the commander was fighting for her life.
    I arrived at the babysitters and called my parents’ home. My sister’s desperate voice came over  the line. “The ambulance is taking her right now. Hurry Tracy, she is calling for you!”
    Again, I slammed the phone down and ran out the door. The hospital was 10 minutes away.
    I made my way up three floors and over the sky walk to the oncology unit. Under my labored breath I mumbled, “Please God, don’t let me be too late.”
    I entered the unit and that smell hit me full-force – the rancid, rotting smell of the enemy we had lived with for so many months. It was that smell that helped give cancer the characteristics of a living, breathing entity we must destroy.
    I saw my dad at the foot of the bed. He told Mom I was there, and I moved to her bedside. When she smiled up at me, the floodgates opened and I fell onto her bony chest sobbing like a baby. She held my head tightly against her, and I knew by her embrace that this was goodbye.
    I sat down in the chair beside her, and she said, “This is it.” My dad repeated, “Yeah baby, this is it.” Then she asked if we had said all there was to say. My dad, sister and I assured her that we had no issues between us. I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking.
    It was at this time when Mom made her proclamation, “I won’t die on a Tuesday. It will either be today or Wednesday, but I won’t die on a Tuesday. My kids were born on a Tuesday, and I won’t die on that day.”
    The rest of the afternoon was a barrage of family and friends visiting the room. My mom laughed and joked with them all. Dad kidded that she was making a liar out of him and that no one would believe that she was so bad that morning. She just gave him one of their secret smiles. We discussed the funeral and decided she would be buried in her country dance costume. I told her we would two-step her to the grave, and that thought pleased her.
    The next day was Tuesday. The moment I walked into the room, I knew everything had changed from the day before. The laughing had stopped, and she was barely coherent. During a brief moment of understandable expression, she wanted a piece of paper. She was going to sign her name.
    She told my dad in a mumbled but determined voice, “That way if you need my signature for anything, you can tell them my wife is dead, but I have this paper she signed before she died.” My dad nodded to her with his lips pressed tightly together to suppress the agony that was choking his heart. She was still trying to take care of him like she had been doing for 30 years. The rest of the day she was in and out of conscientious, but she held onto her conviction and did not die on a Tuesday.
    It was 6:30 a.m. Wednesday when my aunt entered the family room to get me and my sister. As we ran down the hall, she warned us it was bad. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see.
    When I pushed the door open, Mom was slumped diagonally in the bed, eyes rolled upward and a thick, dark, foamy blood ran from her nose and mouth. The nurse standing over her gently wiped the blood as soon as it came up. The doctor came in at 7 a.m. and ordered more morphine. Shot after shot was pushed in to her veins. We all witnessed it as the doctor checked his watch.
    It was difficult not to resent this medical expert we had trusted who at that moment, seemed to be conspiring with the enemy. Other irrational thoughts crossed my mind.
    I imagined that the blood was all the cancer in her body, and after she purged it from her system, she would be healthy again. But the reality was that Mom was going to die today.
    After countless shots, the bleeding finally stopped. We decided to remove any tubes that would prolong the inevitable, but Mom clung to life for another six hours. I didn’t blame her; at her young age of 46, I would not want to let go either.
    The last 48 hours had taken a toll on my family, and the battle fatigue was beginning to show. It was at that moment when we decided to release her. We told her something we had never dared to speak before because until that moment, we would have taken anything the enemy could have thrown at us.
    I leaned over her and said, “Mom, it hurts me to see you like this. It is time for you to go now.” The words were so painful they burned my throat. Dad and Cathy echoed the same message.
    After 15 minutes, she started her final barrage. She had to get her final say. Mom started talking so fast it was difficult to make out the words. Like artillery through an assault rifle, she repeated her surrender demands, “Take care of my husband, take care of my babies.” At 3 p.m. on May 4, 1994, Mom took her last labored breath.
    Through it all, Mom never gave into the enemy that waged within her body. Cancer would like nothing better than have its adversaries give up in defeat, loath in self-pity and succumb to its clutches. My mom fought it well and did it on her own terms: “Not on a Tuesday.”