just read it now.  Your mother, I'm assuming?  It could be the story of my own mother - she's devoutly Catholic, devoted to the Blessed Mother - and yet absolutely terrified of hospitals and dying.  Daughter of Irish immigrants, rosary and novena afficiondo, every scrap of reading material in her bedroom is about faith, religion and spiritual healing.  Lots of Thomas Merton, CS Lewis.  But  what I'm always struck by is her ever-present fear of death, and of dying alone.  She always has someone there, with 8 grown children and my father surrounding her but she never lets go of that fear.  Why is that, I wonder?