Free Until I Say Good-Bye by Susan Spencer-Wendel Page B

champagne. “Group Therapy,” it read. It felt like me.
    Ellen asked me to sit down. The sofa was plaid, a folded blanket on the back. Bright yellow walls. A lamp with a pink-fringed shade like you might see in a boudoir. Some modern glass knickknacks. Some Asian-inspired pieces. Books, books, books. And outside, visible through a window, that gorgeous rose garden.
    â€œMy mother made something for you,” I said, crying, and handed her the photo album.
    And just like that, it began. An easing of the soul. A way to a better understanding of my personality. My quirkiness. My directness. My little bit of hippie with a sense of style.
    A year later, on our way to Hawaii in the summer of 2009, John and I spent an afternoon with Ellen. So much for thanking my birth mama and leaving her behind. She was a part of my life now. I wanted John to meet her. I wanted to know her better.
    We went to a beach park. We took off our shoes. John laughed when he saw our feet side by side, bunions bulging, the same French fry toes. “Now I know you two are related,” he said, as he took a picture of Ellen and me from the ankles down.
    I told John and Ellen I wanted to write a book. “You should call it ‘Bunions in the Sand,’ ” John said.
    I had noticed my withered left hand only a few weeks before. I didn’t mention it on that trip, but as I searched for medical answers over the next six months, I realized the serendipity of Ellen appearing when she did.
    Ellen came to Florida that year for Thanksgiving. She was visiting her daughter, a crew member on a yacht docked in Fort Lauderdale. (I met her daughter, who was more than ten years younger than me, a few times. Attended her wedding in Seattle. But we’ve had no contact since then.)
    Afterward, Ellen stayed for a few days at a hotel near my house. I had respected my parents’ wishes and not told my children about her, but I took them to the hotel, knowing she would like to see them. We swam. We lunched. We took so many pictures Marina asked, “Are you, like, a relative or something?”
    â€œNo, I’m just Ellen,” she said.
    I showed Ellen my hand. I questioned her about her medical history. Neither she, nor any member of her family, had had anything similar.
    I cherish that, especially now, above all Ellen’s other gifts: the peace of mind, knowing my ALS isn’t genetic. My children will inherit many things from me, but they will not inherit my fate.

Family Reunion
    M om never talked about Ellen. She didn’t ask any meaningful questions about our meeting. She didn’t understand Ellen’s importance to me, and the relationship hurt her. Tee dealt with that hurt through silence: the kind that says more than words.
    Her feelings can be summarized in the question she asked Nancy when I wasn’t around, the same one she had asked me months before: “Susan still loves us, doesn’t she?”
    My feelings crystallized around a short cruise Mom and I took together in February 2011. This was four months before my diagnosis, and a few weeks before my trip to New Orleans with Nancy, when I consciously admitted to myself for the first time that I probably had ALS.
    Still deep in denial, I spent the cruise on the ship’s pool deck, icy beer bucket beside me, thigh-to-oiled-thigh in the sun-worshipping crowd. The international belly flop contest was on: large, hirsute men from Ohio flung themselves aloft into the pool as I led the sideline vocal scoring.
    â€œTen!” I’d holler out for the biggest splat of skin.
    Mom passed her time in our cabin, struggling to relax. The crowds, the heat, the noise, it was too much for her to handle. She was way, way afield of her comfort zone—the one where she controlled everything.
    So she found problems. The ship’s housekeeping staff had folded our bath towels into animal shapes. Marina loved the cute monkey. Tee promptly unfolded the monkey so the