She was a rocker. She loved the Doors, Pink Floyd, Mick Jagger, Led Zeppelin, and Bob Dylan.

She led a quiet life growing up. She was the “invisible child” among her siblings. They all had their labels in this household.

Progressively moving up the executive ladder as her daddy deteriorated (no longer a functional alcoholic), her mommy was distant and negligent and tended to care only for herself: designer clothes, perfect hairdo.

Mary led that quiet life, the good “Catholic girl.” She was a baby boomer and watched history in front of their small black-and-white TV: the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and RFK (heroes from days gone by). Richard Nixon and Watergate, the Vietnam War, racial disparities.

She became a nurse, something her mother dictated her to be. She ventured out and broke the cycle of Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys and the dictation of submissive women.

And she found her magic man. He opened up doors to her imagination. They married though her mom said, “He’s not one of us.” Three children later and a complicated life drenched in nightshift overtime as a nurse, but she did it all.

Mary smoked two to three packs of cigarettes a day and finally gave it up “cold turkey.”

When she was 61 years old, she had severe abdominal pain. Later, she discovered pancreatic and liver cancer with metastases to her lungs and lymph nodes. But Mary never gave up. Not only was Mary in denial, but her surgeon and oncologist promoted her denial.

Surgery (a Whipple procedure), pain management, oncologist, chemo, and meditation followed. And her physicians encouraged her to live that long life, despite the truth.

Her pain management physician finally came out with the truth: “There’s nothing more we can do. It’s time. Time to make yourself a DNR/DNI, do not treat. There’s nothing more we can do. Get your house in order. Make yourself comfortable.”

Christmas Eve she lay in her hospice bed at a hospice center. The ceramic Christmas tree lit. A book containing friends’ and family’s well wishes and prayers. Her daughter occasionally strummed an old Bob Dylan favorite: “The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.”

Christmas was her favorite holiday.

A life filled with sadness and happiness. A complicated life of always hoping her husband would finally love her despite his ongoing infidelities.

That last breath.

Christmas morning, her children were by her side with silent whispers of love. She was 63 years old, the same age as her mother’s death. So many more years to live, but cancer stole her life.

Consequences, regrets, happiness and sadness, and no magic cure. Too little. Too late.

The glow and the shadow of that ceramic Christmas tree as she let out her last breath on that cold and cloudy snow-filled day.

“The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.”

Debbie Moore-Black is a nurse who blogs at The Critical Care Nurse.