“Where the hell have you been?” I hear no one asking. Funny story. My stepmother, Shirley, is 91 years old. Just after New Year’s I received a call from my stepbrother Eric. He was near tears. Mom had been found on her kitchen floor by a neighbor. She had been lying there for more than 24 hours incoherent and unable to move. We all thought she was going to die. It was not a stroke. She was dehydrated and suffering from a large abscess under a tooth. After three days in intensive care she was sent to a rehabilitation facility to regain her strength and learn to walk again. This tiny woman had been a nurse during World War II and had been one of the early pioneers in physical therapy. When soldiers came back from the front lines paralyzed or missing arms and legs, she was one of the young women that put them back together again. She worked 45 years in that discipline, raised three boys and buried two husbands. For years she had talked about how tired she was of this life and how she would welcome the end of it. But…when she was sent to the rehab facility she rallied quickly and it wasn’t long before she was walking the halls, pushing her walker in front of her, visiting other patients worse off than herself. When she found out that one of the orderlies played the ukulele she had hers brought from home and they played duets in the exercise room. People are funny that way. The mind says No-No, but the body says Yes-Yes. Because I am the only one of her boys who is retired I assumed a large part of the responsibility for her when she came home. Sitting and chatting, going for walks and, because she can no longer drive, trips to the store, the beach and movies. So my absence has been a combination of time and motivation. As the weeks went by I realized my muse had left me. I called out to her and she answered back in the voice of my departed mother. “You want to take photographs? Get off your fat behind and get out of the house.” So now I’m back with a bunch of stuff. My stepmother will be 92 in July. Last week she cooked dinner for nine people. We all had a lovely evening. The woman will just not quit. The lesson from all of this? Just because you are buried doesn't mean you are dead.