I pulled up the sleeve to her hospital gown and saw she had a tattoo on her arm I had never seen. “Time waits for no one,” it read. I was standing in a hospital, with a woman I’d been disconnected from for years, who I hadn’t allowed to meet my child, and she was dying. My mother was dying. Quickly. She was losing her almost forty year battle with addiction. I had mentally prepared for this day most of my life, yet here it was and I needed time to pause. I needed time to wait. I had so much more left to say.