Page 55 of How Lulu Lost Her Mind

“True.” She’s divorced five men and broken the hearts of countless others.

“I want a simple engraving like Momma.”

Somehow, I doubt that. “What do you want it to say?”

“I don’t know.”

Even though I’m “not any good” with rhymes, I try to think one up. Something pretty that will make her smile. I start with, “Patricia Lynn Jackson…” (Since her fifth divorce, from Buzzy Doyle, she legally changed back to her maiden name, Jackson.) I rack my brain, and the only rhyme I can think up is flaxen, but her hair has always been dark like mine. “Patricia Lynn Jackson,” I try again, “her friends called her Patty… she was always pretty and seldom bratty.”

She tips her head back and laughs, and my heart is happy. “Remember when you stuck your tongue out at one of your teachers and I had to come get you from school?”

Yes, and I probably looked like Mom in her Shirley Temple dress. “You were mad, but when I told you she said I was a poor thing from a broken home, you took me to McDonald’s for lunch as consolation.”

She sits on the granite slab supporting Grandmother’s vault. “You’re a good daughter.”

She hasn’t said that since the first day that we arrived at Sutton Hall.

“I’ve had a good life.” She gazes off into the distance like she does when she starts to sink further into her Alzheimer’s. But it’s only morning, and she’s usually good until at least four.

“You’re tired. Let me take you back to the house.”

“I’ve had a good life,” she repeats. “I want to die soon.”

“What?”

“You have to help me end my life.”

The shovel falls from my grasp. “What?”

“If you love me, you’ll help me die.”

I sink to the granite slab beside her. “No.” This isn’t the first time she’s mentioned killing herself. Shortly after she was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she talked about Washington State’s Death with Dignity Act, but she didn’t meet the requirements for medical assistance to end her own life. Namely, she wasn’t six months from dying of a terminal illness. I’d forgotten all about that. I thought she had, too.

She looks into my eyes, her expression as clear as it was that first night in Seattle when she said, “I know it’s a lot to ask.”

My face goes numb. She’s serious. I open my mouth, but I can’t form words. I should have known she was buttering me up for a reason. All that happy reminiscing and “you’re a good daughter” were because she wanted something.

And I fell for it. Again.

“I told you I want to be buried next to Momma.”

“Yeah.” In disbelief, I wave my hand in the air. “Sometime in the future, and you never mentioned anything about me killing you!”

She shrugs and adjusts her hat. “I don’t want to suffer and wear a bib. It’s a horrible way to go.”

I agree, but I’m not going to kill her.

“I help others with my passionate nature, but I can’t help myself.”

“Oh my God, stop with the passionate nature.”

“Don’t curse. That’s why you have to help me.”

“No, Mom. I can’t.” This is absurd. It doesn’t feel real, but I know it is.

“Think of it as a mercy killing.”

&nbs