Dignity is the choice anyone can make.

I've read about living wills and death with dignity. I've heard of hospice, wondered about brain waves and respirators, argued with friends about moral versus legal laws. But I hadn't really addressed dying with self-respect--until it became an emotional reality.

Technically, my mother's 1980 open-heart surgery was successful. She handled the body's pain with her usual optimism and gratitude. How was she to know that the transfused blood was a silent killer?

Into her arm dripped fluid that infected her liver: chronic active hepatitis, non-A, non-B. There were no tests ahead of time to determine if a blood donor was a carrier of it. I knew that chronic active meant death within five years; if only she'd had chronic persistent hepatitis! I didn't tell her what I knew.

My moist palm clasped my husband's as we talked during the 3000-mile trip to California in November 1984. Our weekend meant letting my parent complete her life as she'd lived it: never calling attention to her ailments, expressing real concern for others, having a sense of humor, believing she can work or fight to survive any misfortune, sending her family away with no guilt, always thinking to ease their pain and not her own.

I wanted to discuss her dying and my anger and I wanted to say goodbye. These were my needs. She wanted me to see her cheerful.

Years before, while on a trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco, she had a massive myocardial infarction coupled with pulmonary emboli (blood clots in the lungs). In the San Francisco coronary care unit, she displayed a smile, admired my blouse, wondered why I'd come all the way to see her in a hospital bed. When I left for some sleep, I looked at the hills and the bay and felt confused that anyone could possibly be dying while there was so much light and beauty outside.

She survived the blood clots in her lungs and a massive heart attack, yet open-heart surgery was eventually a necessity. The surgery was successful but the transfused blood proved to be deadly. My husband, an internist, wondered how he'd answer if she asked how that could be. She never asked.

In the Los Angeles hospital, I saw a fragile woman with a swollen abdomen too toxin-filled for her deteriorated liver to process. The healthy, 1925 Miss Pitkin Avenue, Brooklyn, beauty queen whose shapely legs her daughters inherited had wasted away from the disease's devastation. She strained to get on her feet. She forced herself to sit to have her hair done. She talked about the trip she'd make to my son's forthcoming May wedding, worried about my bad back during the upcoming flights home. My mother, widowed for thirty-two years, set an example of cheer, endurance, and snap after falling with life's shoves, and she needed to continue to play this role while dying. I had to grant her this. For had I whispered "Why you?" she would have responded "Why not?"

I understand the concept of death with dignity now. Terminally ill people should pick how they want others to treat them plus how they want to act. As I fondled my spouse's finger I allowed myself the luxury of tears knowing, shortly, I'd bury my mother in sandy Long Island soil beside my father. She was placed there in January 1985. I never saw her again after that November journey, as I carried out the charade that she'd be well enough to come east for her grandchild's wedding. Had I flown back, we would have had to speak of her illness causing me to fly another 6,000 miles roundtrip, and she wanted to share life and hope. I accepted what she needed.

It's 2004 and my older sister has sustained, just in the last couple of years, strokes, heart attacks, open-heart surgery, two cancers of the stomach, heart failure, and pulmonary emboli. Frail and confined to a wheelchair, she maintains her sense of humor, is interested in others, and refuses to talk about her condition. She speaks of the future with wonder and enthusiasm. Once again I must accept, this time for a sibling, what she expects of me and allow her to choose. My personal need to display tears must be controlled. She insists on dignity, as our mother had done almost two decades ago. For "Why me?" she'd also reply, "Why not?"

Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. This is an updated version of an article published in the San Francisco Chronicle on August 10, 1991.