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Perched on a cot in a hospital room overlooking the Cathedral, Patricia Hampl sits holding her mother’s hand through her last night of life. Balancing a pad of paper on her lap and scrawling notes (the start of an obituary), the author holds the hand that has crushed out countless cigarettes in saucers on the kitchen table, punctuating stories of the soirées decorated by her husband Stan, the florist. Sitting in the dark beside her mother, the florist’s daughter opens and closes her solemn gift of a memoir. MORE »