“It was the smell of the sage,” my mother told me twenty-five years ago. “I was in a place, like by the lake where I would hunt ducks with my Dad when I was a kid. It was dawn and the fog was so thick I couldn’t see through it. But I knew I was safe there. It was very safe. I could feel the sand under my boots as I walked toward the water.

“I could smell everything so clearly. Everything in the woods, the sage. The sage smelled so good. I knew if I could just get to the water…”

But that was not really what was happening. What was really happening was my mother was moments away from death, an accidental overdose of painkillers as she was coming out of a surgery. She was so tiny. And the dose was too great for her little body. We all stood outside her room as the hospital staff barreled into her room with their paddles and probes and beeping monitors. Screaming her name. Trying to get a response.

“People kept calling my name. It was annoying me,” my mother recalled. “I knew if I could just get to the water, something amazing was going to happen. The fog opened up, and I could see in front of me. The lake, was magnificent.”

She didn’t make it into the water. Twenty-five years ago medical staff yanked my mother away from the shore, and she came back to us.

Early this morning, before dawn, my mother, Veraine Alcyne Harrington Muñiz, stepped on to her sand, walked bravely and earnestly through the breaking fog, the smell of the sage surrounding her in every breath she took, and stepped gloriously into her magnificent lake. And she didn’t look back.

Thanks for everything, Mom.