This is going to be another long one so fasten your seat belts and put your tray tables away.

My Mom has had a hard life. Not as hard as a lot of women but certainly not as easy as others, either.

Her father was killed in a quarry accident when she was eight. Her mother was a flake who slept around and spent the assistance money earmarked for her kids, on herself. The state broke her family up and sent the kids off to various foster homes in various states.

In the early 1950's, when she was a young woman, she got pregnant and her Navy boyfriend subsequently left her.

She met my Dad and got married, thinking she'd found stability at last. But my Dad was a drunk and Mom found herself with three boys - one with a weird bone disorder - and a nasty drunk for a husband.

In 1966, she miscarried due largely to the stress of living with my father.

In 1989, Dad died.

In 1990, her baby boy divorced.

In 1992, her second son divorced.

In 1998 I moved to Seattle and she moved to Florida to be with her new husband.

Her new husband was everything her old husband wasn't. He had enough money, he was an upstanding Christian and, he loved her. Or so it seemed.

In 2000, her baby boy was killed in an accident.

By this time, she had pretty much found out that her new husband had only desired to marry into maid service. With a small, quickly dwindling union pension to draw on, she's dependent on him in a whole lot of ways.

He's 91 and demanding and deaf and in denial and a right-wing nut and accuses her when he misplaces things and...well, a whole lot more.

Last week she had to go to the hospital because her blood pressure was running freakishly high on the top number. When she told her husband she was sick and had to go to the hospital, his first response was, "What about me?"

Last week she had a stress test and another test that uses radioactive isotope thingies in the bloodstream and an MRI-like machine to look at the heart. The doctor that administered the test told her doctor that she had a normal heart but the nurse who did the actual picture-taking thought she saw a shadow on Mom's heart which might be a blocked artery.

The next day she had another test like the first but done at rest. She's waiting to see if her doctor will call.

Mom is 74.

I don't know why I shared this. Then again, I guess I did so that I could ask you to shoot Mom some good thoughts. I'd appreciate it and so would she.