Today a dear friend and mentor of mine, a woman who I have asked a few times to write for this new Web site, finally confided the reasons she could not, and would not, be submitting anything.

She said she felt you should nurture your relationships while family members and friends are still here. . .that five more minutes simply wouldn’t be sufficient.

My response?

That I am fine with her decision, and I TOTALLY get it. I realize that Five More Minutes With is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea. (An aside. My own father thinks the whole concept is “morbid” and a person should learn to compartmentalize death and dying.)

Anyway, I told her that anyone who has said all they needed or wanted to say to those they love before they die are the lucky ones. . .

Even I probably wouldn’t have become so invested in this subject had I not discovered my beautiful mother , whose motto was to “live each day gloriously,” and who raised orchids under black lights, was a secret compulsive hoarder. Here she is at the orchid display at Longwood Gardens in Kenneth Square, Pennsylvania.

And here is the kitchen pantry, a.k.a., her “office” when I was growing up. Poor Cimarron. . .hardly enough space to perch.

And here is one of the drawers in her kitchen, just before she died. Had I only known, or recognized what was going on here.

After her death, and after my father moved away from the home they shared for 20 years, Spencer and I discovered her secret stash when we went down to clean out the house and ended up with 39 huge garbage bags of trash and refuse.

I will always feel sorry Mom didn’t confide in me/us so I/we could have gotten her the help she so desperately needed. . .that is my life’s greatest regret, and the impetus for Five More Minutes With.

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I was walking down a long lonely hallway from the side entrance to Sarasota Memorial Hospital on my way to visit my 90-year-old father. I was trying to deal with how in a matter of two days, my seemingly fairly healthy dad had gone from what they thought might be a simple bladder infection to near renal failure and the possibility that his leg would have to be amputated.
Being an only child, I can’t remember ever feeling so alone. If only I could have five more minutes with my mom who had died a year earlier of ovarian cancer. She was the strong one. She was stoic. She always had an off- the- wall comment that would somehow break the tension of any moment.
I would ask her to help me be as strong as she was. I would ask her how she got through the rough times in her life. I would ask her for the right words to comfort my dad.
And, I would ask her how I could get through this without her.
I never got those five minutes, but when I made the turn down the next hallway heading to the elevators, I got a whiff of “Beautiful,” my mom’s perfume. No one was in the hall, but I know my mom was there. She had answered me, and I did get through those horrible days leading to the loss of my dad.

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