“You have a remarkable capacity for contentment, if not happiness,” Maggie addressed her son as they stood inside the airport. Paul was struck by the casual way his mother delivered this statement of alleged fact, uncertain if it was a compliment or one of her complex criticisms. They had been standing silently together, neither good at farewells. Paul turned to hug her awkwardly and watched as she huffed off for the security checkpoint, the brightly colored box containing the  salmon in ice she planned to cook that night for her eldest son swinging from her arm. Paul sensed he would never see her again, and tears flowed from his eyes, but he was still caught off-guard that afternoon by his brother’s call informing him she had died two hours after landing. 

“Deal cried the losers!” William shouted with glee as he and his grandmother won their third consecutive hand of bridge. His eyes lit up with joy as he taunted his mother and father, who were clearly no match for the unlikely pairing of seven-year-old wunderkind and contract bridge veteran, Maggie.  William's grandmother had been on a mission all week to teach him how to play bridge.

Her own mother had died delivering her. Maggie's life had been tragic in so many ways. She had been a college professor during the happy post-divorce years of her life, and had a knack for making abstract concepts clear to her students. To reward William for his card playing, she handed him another “vitamin,” a chocolate she removed from the bag of treats she carried for the grandchildren.

“I’ll have French toast, my sister will have bacon with one egg over HARD, and my grandmother will have the usual,” William took charge, showing off as he ordered breakfast for everyone. Maggie’s eggs benedict arrived much to her delight. Now that she was a food-deprived Midwesterner, every day all that week she ate eggs benedict for breakfast, lobster for lunch, and a variety of gourmet dinners featuring caviar, salmon, ribs, halibut, cheeses, and the richest desserts on every pastry tray in Manhattan. “Eating with Grandma sure is fun!”

“I worry about your inability to put yourself first,” Maggie ground her cigarette butt into the white shell that served as her portable ashtray. “Your marriage, your job…it just seems you fall into situations without knowing why.  I find it very sad that after twenty years of marriage your father conceded that I really hadn’t wanted to be a wife and mother and finally agreed to divorce me. I married your father because I was a weak-kneed jerk without any clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life, and he seemed to think he did. He was, of course, all wet. But you should not blame others for shaping your life when you cannot."

Paul felt uncomfortable hearing this and was struck by the odd finality in her voice, which had been there all week. She knew this would be her final visit and soldiered on through frequent dizzy spells, her complexion ghost white.

“I’ve decided not to have more surgery when I get home. The last time the heart surgeon made a mistake and had to do it all over.” 

Maggie stared up at her son Aaron from the stretcher. “I didn't lug this salmon all the way through the corridors of hell not to cook it for you. I’m feeling better. Let’s go home.” On the flight home she had been preparing a shopping list and revising her investment portfolio on a small napkin. She was happy to be returning home, eager to share her grandchildren stories with her only friend, Enid. She missed the grandchildren terribly, but felt recharged with all the new memories she carried inside. The trip had been worth the effort. The final leg of her flight had been difficult, crammed inside a small Beechcraft airplane, sweaty and short of breath. Thunderstorms tossed the passengers about as she watched the radar up by the pilots alternate between yellow and red. “Is this how it's to end?” she chuckled to herself. But she survived that, too.

Now nurses were scurrying about, prepping her for an emergency operation. She didn’t want to go but her surgeon told Aaron it was the only hope. He took the container of salmon she had so lovingly transported and headed off to sign all the humiliating paperwork, shepherded from one waiting room to the next, until he reached the final one – the room with the phone he used to call Paul.

“I love you,” were her departing words as she watched the surgeons attempting to revive her. Her heart had stopped beating seconds ago, and now she soared peacefully above the room on her final flight home to meet her mother.