This picture was for Mother's Day the year she died. Maybe it was for me as much as for my mother. I think if I were dying I wouldn't care what I looked like at 16, any more than I would care what I look like while dying.

I think I wanted to keep her whole, to say that her life was important from beginning to end. The trouble with being a kid is that you see your parent as a parent. Only as an adult do you begin to think oh ... so this is what you felt. So this is what it meant. So this is who you are.

We - her children - spent a lot of time with her before she died, sitting by her bed, watching for opportunities to please her, for ways to make her comfortable, for the light to come back into her eyes.

When I was drawing Roco the dog, she kept forgetting and thinking I was drawing her. She thought she needed to stay awake and I told her, no, I'm not drawing you. It's okay. You can go back to sleep. She would close her eyes, but each time I looked back they were open again. Pale, pale blue, with my mother somewhere far behind them.

If I could rewrite that section of life, I would have told her how much I was going to miss her. Believing she knew it turns out not to be enough after all. I am forever looking back, saying, 'Wait! One more thing before you go ...'