I have always feared an ironic death. A vegetarian with mad cow disease. (That has happened, I think! Or fear...) More recently, there was a time when I was certain my obituary would read, "Bellwether Vance died last night after a long and courageous battle with her teenage daughter." No death would have been more ironic.

She slipped into the world painlessly. We were both surprised, looking at one another. A confused look of recognition. Haven’t we met? As a toddler, she played quietly on a blanket during long lunches with friends. As a preschooler, she’d sit for hours if she had a pencil and paper. In elementary and middle school, her teachers loved her, her good grades seemed effortless, and she had many friends. Arrogantly, I patted myself on the back for a job well done.

Eighth grade brought some minor skirmishes over borders and unmapped territories, but nothing prepared me for World War (Grades) Nine, Ten, Eleven and Twelve. She dropped her old friends, and found new ones on Myspace. I discovered a flask in her purse. A joint. A pack of cigarettes. She cut off her hair -- cherry cola tresses that curled down her back -- and dyed it a brassy blonde. Even uglied up, she was pretty, and the bad boys knocked on our door, or her window late at night.

Since I held the big guns (purse strings and car keys), I forced her into an internment camp of perpetual restriction, forgetting we’d be housed in the same cell. In confined quarters, we pummeled each other with words, day and night. When I paroled her, she’d fly out of the house like a crazed bird gunning for mirrored windows.

She was only content when I was following her around the mall, buying her shit. After one drawn-out battle, I grabbed my keys and said, "Lets go to the mall. I need to follow you around and buy you shit!" Really, I just wanted to see her happy, and she wasn’t ready, yet, to be happy.

One thing we shared was music. In the mall record store (I still call it the record store) we flipped through CD’s and hit the listening stations, gesturing to one another. Come hear this. Anything from the Elephant Six collective, especially Neutral Milk Hotel. Wilco. Patty Griffin. Bright Eyes. Spoon. Neko Case and Jenny Lewis. Many others. Song by song we compiled a mix tape that mixed us, blended us, for as long as a song lasts.

I tiptoed up the stairs one night, and heard the CD player. She had gone to sleep with the music playing, and I laid down beside her. I put my hand on the small of her back, and suddenly remembered who she was. Through these teenage years she had been someone who had caused me endless worry, bottomless anger, and restless sleep. Her face had faded, and my vision of her had become the embodiment of my troubled feelings rather than the sum of her features. Now, fitting my fingers into her spine, I felt the warmth of her skin through her shirt, the heave of her chest and I remembered her tugging mouth at my breast. Her hand reaching up to explore my face and mouth. When we were connected in a circle of limbs and mouths. In that moment I promised to allow her a first breath every day. To accept her as new every morning. I can’t say that forever after we lived conflict free, but I did hold to my promise and felt unburdened by it.

I realize – I do – that our temporary mother/daughter standoff is commonplace and even appealingly mundane to a parent dealing with serious issues of addiction and mental illness. I have learned to be thankful for the type of relationship with enough ease for us to hate one another, briefly.

And I have written a new obituary. "Bellwether Vance died last night, in her sleep, at the age of 102. She was an insomniac who hated old people." An ironic death, to be sure, but one I think I could live with.