Dear Mom (aka Pinkie Patti),

It's a perfect fall day for your 84th birthday: the sky is blue, the air is crisp, the colours are changing and Canadian geese are honking in the field.

I'm grateful for all the wonderful times we've shared together the past year, even though it has also been really hard for both of us at times.

Darkness has a different quality just before sunrise: it’s more transparent, thinner, gauzier than the full-on black velvet immediately preceding and following midnight.

When dawn’s light finally filters through the gossamer veil of the wee hours, our worlds stir.

It’s a wonderful time to be awake, alive and aware.

The first time I stayed at Le Gîte La Marmotte my now-favourite B&B in Eastman, Quebec, I came upon a rusty old railroad bridge during one of my morning walks.

(On a subsequent morning walk, I snapped this photographic mini-documentary of surprising stuff I found in the environs.)

Even the midst of pain and chaos, great beauty may be found.

Every day over the past year, as I cared for my Mom (Pinkie Patti), I captured a little bit of it – with my eyes, my heart and sometimes my iPhone 4.

These will be the joyful memories of our last times together as mother and daughter, reflections of a relationship under life's microscope.

Wherever you are, you have just been touched by a brave mamacita warrior who, as I write this, is living her final days with cancer in a hospice on Canada’s west coast. Her name is Mary Jardine.

You will never meet her, or hear her voice, at least not in this world. Nevertheless, she may change your life in some small or big way by virtue of the fact you are reading this.