The week began with a long flight from California to Maryland, a few hours of sleep, and a 5 a.m. car ride to take my mother to the hospital for cancer surgery.

At 90 years old, Mom had survived a stroke just one week earlier, her second stroke this year. This one left her more cognitively impaired than the last, such that she could no longer form sentences or comprehend much of what was spoken to her. Now, here she was about to undergo anesthesia and surgery that would likely take further toll on her already-compromised mental and physical state. The cancer that had been discovered in her abdomen just a month prior was deemed too aggressive to wait on. So despite her stroke and the resulting aphasia, Mom’s surgery was moved up in urgency. My siblings and I converged in time and place to see her through it. Everyone agreed that such a course of action might save her from greater suffering down the road.

Ever resilient, Mom sailed through the surgery without issue and was released from the hospital the next day. Yet the effects of her stroke, further complicated by dementia, further complicated by the anesthesia administered to her 90-year-old brain, further complicated by layer upon layer of what life had served her, hung over us throughout the week. Each day, I watched her with intensity, trying to make sense of her stunted phrases, incoherent mumblings, a sigh or facial expression hinting at some expression of emotion. Sometimes she managed a few coherent words, only to trail off in clouded thoughts and jumbled speech. My siblings and I spent many hours in her presence during the week — making sure she didn’t confuse her comb with her toothbrush, helping her in and out of her wheelchair, monitoring her in the bathroom, changing diapers and clothing that got soiled, trying to understand her needs as she struggled to communicate.

The days passed in slow monotony at her assisted care facility. Mom arose in the morning, was dressed, given her meals, entertained by the TV screen, or if we were lucky, an activity taking place at her care facility. At the end of the day, she was dressed for bed, hopefully to sleep through the night. And the next day, she would start all over again. Rinse and repeat. Her own personal Groundhog’s Day. Her world had become so small and mundane. I wondered whether our family had reached the end point of what was possible to guarantee her the “quality of life” we sought to give.

On Saturday, the day before I was scheduled to return to California, I wheeled Mom down to the exercise room in the bottom floor of her building and managed to get both our bodies onto the elliptical reclining bikes. Though Mom’s mental state is deeply compromised and she is largely wheelchair-bound, her physical strength remains remarkably resilient. Side by side, we stretched our arms and legs in back and forth motion on the machine, gazing silently out the big glass windows at the sunny scene outside. No unnecessary words were spoken. Just the two of us in quiet rhythm.

Afterwards, Mom seemed interested in going outside. So, I wheeled her out the side doors to a spot just beyond the shaded overhang of the building where the sun beamed down on us, intense like a magnifying glass. My inquiries of, “Is this okay?” or “How does this feel?” were simply met with “Yeah” and a shrug of her shoulders. I took it as affirmation to proceed.

The air outside was crisp, tinged with dampness from the rain showers that had brought storms and grey clouds over the past few days. To our delight, the sky shown above us in brilliantly blue, cloudless, a bold backdrop against the late November foliage colored in red and auburn and gold. Beyond the trees, you could just make out the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. A large fountain to the right splashed with gentle excitement. There was nobody around.

Five minutes of bliss.

We sat there together, sun-soaked, warming our bodies and gazing at the view. I thought of the world that Mom would, as a matter of course, soon leave behind — a world that I presumably had many more years to live in. I thought of all the chaos, conflict, hope, possibility, and utter uncertainty of this time we are living in. I wondered what would happen to us, to me, to the life I lived back when Mom instructed me as a child into this world —  the home I grew up in, the experiences that formed me, the ways of being I inherited from her, for better or worse. Now, well into my middle years, I find I am searching for the threads that connect me to my past but offer a lifeline to the future. The wise ones tell us there’s no going backward in life. We are hurled forward into life in all its beautiful wreckage whether we like it or not. But the brief pauses, like this one, make it more beautiful than tragic. In that moment in the sun, I saw peace in Mom’s eyes. I felt a letting go, a release of control, for both of us. And I made a mental note to add this to the collection of warm memories of Mom that I would carry with me long after she left us.

Many of us strive to ensure that our loved ones have an adequate “quality of life” in their final days, that they don’t needlessly suffer. I’m not sure we can fully control that aspect of life for someone else, or even for ourselves. But my five minutes of bliss with Mom reminded me that our quality of life is shaped by moments, discrete packages of time. The best quality of life is given to us when life’s mysterious beauty outshines our tragedy. Our thread of life, held together like ornaments strung on a garland — this is the pain and the gift, the sorrow and joy, we have been given.