Today is a sad four-year anniversary of Mom dying much too soon, made bittersweet because we are only a few days before we buy our dream house here in California. I know she wanted a better life for all of her kids, even though her scrimping still has not yielded that. Indeed, it has been squandered by one she trusted and we are still fighting to make her dream manifest. What’s made me more melancholy the last few days is the realization that had she lived, this house would have afforded an ideal situation for her to have her own independent place on the property. Sadly, there is no reason for me to think about such a prospect, because I no longer have a mother that I can take care of, as we did the last few months of her life when she was taken by a particularly insidious form of cancer.