I smell lilacs and the new green smell under them, released as black earth crumbles away from brave two-leaves, trembling up on pale stalks. I smell lilacs and spring start, the water smell before the big leaves unfold, the cold splashed smell of trees buzzed-over with limedot green and faint red fire, bare-limbed below, like young men at a first dance, and the lilacs like new girls, dipping not-full-yet florets together, whispering.

I smell lilacs and I am not saved, not quite. No fragrant spring can save me. But I smell lilacs, and I forget despair.

My sister called: my mother is dying.

She has months, maybe. Medicare has approved a stack of procedure payments, including a third bypass, two knee replacements, and a hip replacement. There is not enough heart left for a third bypass. One knee grinds bone on bone, so it no longer bends. Her colon is failing so she has gone from 114 to 88 pounds in 2 months.

But she can't have a colonoscopy or any more surgeries. She has emphysema and 40% lung capacity, her aortas are more than 50% blocked (again), and her diabetes is bad.

Anesthesia would kill her. She can't walk, she can't work, and she won't leave West Palm to live with my older sister in her trailer in the Keys because my sister, who has worked so hard to care for her, is delusional. She won't move in with us because it's too cold up here in New York. Her emphysema.

And anyway she wants to die with her boots on, in her own apartment. I don't blame her. She is utterly lucid, as bright and self-aware as she was when she systematically abandoned her kids 40 years ago. She sparkles, even. She knows exactly what is happening to her. She is in a lot of pain.

I am broke, the broke of two daughters readying for college, one this September. I have to choose: do I steal $500, sell a first edition, and see her now? to say goodbye? Or go to her funeral in June, and help my sister? Do I stay home and save $500, spend it on my daughter's first textbooks and supplies; my daughter, who will need every penny and has earned every drop of my blood?

My sister will have a breakdown. Fifteen years ago my mother moved to Florida, to watch over my newly-divorced sister. My sister pretends it's the other way around, and that's true, too: she has cared for my mother endlessly. It's a roundabout, mostly good for them both. Mostly.

I'll go. I will take bumpy Jet Blue and sleep on her floor, eat Kraft macaroni and cherry tomatoes with her. Pretend to share her damp nostalgia, act as if she was a good mother, back when. We will break no new ground. My gifts to her will all be familiar. I will wrap my arms around her twice, small as she is now.

All my brothers will probably refuse to go or send money, as usual. "She deserves what she gets" and "She screwed up" and "What did she do for us?"

Yes, she does and yes, she did, and nope, nothing. Not enough, I guess. All true.

I chose 10 years ago to have a mother, and to not be another grudge-listing Irish brute. I have a list, still, somewhere, dusty and ink-faded; it swirls before me, insists, at moments of great happiness, mostly. Odd, that.

Roth called it: "The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy--that is every man's tragedy." He said: "Who is set up for the incomprehensibility of suffering? Nobody." We don't get what we deserve.

We don't always get what we give. Tonight, walking in the fading light, I got lilacs, and in a few weeks I get to grin at my mom and cajole her, make her smile, and I will say goodbye.

When I return that cool water smell will be replaced by a moist understory of decay, the lilac fragrance gone, and the fat leaves will be open, all the way open, again.