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to remove the bigger pieces of shrapnel.”
    I waited for another “Good boy” before realizing she had drifted off to sleep. Lauren bustled in with a tray.
    “Mom, I’ve got a boiled egg for you and …”
    “She’s just fallen asleep,” I said, trying to keep my voice down.
    “I know, David. But she really needs to eat to keep up her strength. She has to eat.”
    I had blundered into a deeper topic than what my mother wanted for dinner. She surfaced again.
    “Thank you, but I don’t think I can handle food right now.”
    “Mom, I know. But you need your strength if we’re going to beat this thing,” Lauren persisted, handing me the tray to hold.
    “Honey, please …” Mom began, but faltered.
    Lauren leaned over her and began to rearrange the pillows to prop her up a bit. Mom allowed her to do this, but she didn’t seem eager to venture much off the horizontal.
    “Umm, Mom, why don’t you just sit there and I’ll help you devour this egg.” I slid closer and picked up the spoon. Mom crossed her arms in slow motion as a final defence, but allowed me to feed her the egg.
    “I promise not to make choo-choo train noises.”
    Mom fell asleep almost immediately after swallowing the last mouthful. I took the tray and dishes downstairs. Lauren was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the wall, nursing a coffee.
    “Was this a good day or a bad day?” I asked as I loaded the dishwasher and returned the tray to its spot on top of the fridge.
    “They’re all pretty much the same now,” Lauren replied. “She hasn’t been downstairs in two weeks and I don’t think she’ll ever be back down here. She’ll never sit in this chair, or turn on that stove, or curse the toaster …” She stopped in mid-sentence and I saw that she was about to lose it.
    “I know. But at least she doesn’t seem in any pain,” I offered. What a weak-assed response.
    “Yeah, some consolation. What a bastard of a disease that the best we can say about it is that she wasn’t in much pain as it took her.”
    Lauren lifted herself to her feet, dumped her coffee in the sink, and went upstairs to her room.
    I don’t think I’d ever heard my sister use a word like “bastard.” I tidied up the kitchen, looked in once more on Mom, deep in sleep, and left.

    I spent the next two days at the office thinking through my Citizen Astronaut contest idea and pulling together a few PowerPoint slides to bring it to life. Despite how much derision it attracts, I actually like PowerPoint, if it’s done well. I’d learned the hard way from a senior civil servant in Ottawa how to make the most of the ubiquitous presentation software after he’d pulled me aside following a briefing I’d given early in my tenure in Ottawa. I’d just learned how to animate PowerPoint slides, and I was smitten. When I’d learned that I could liberate, choreograph, and even provide a soundtrack for my bullet points, I seemed to lose any sense of judgment and restraint. In short, I suddenly felt like George Lucas and went hog-wild. Fortunately, the minister didn’t attend that particular briefing or my humiliation would have been complete.
    It was a presentation on the Canadarm, the mechanical appendage that the Canadian Space Agency built for use on the space shuttle. I considered it an extraordinary achievement and wanted an appropriate measure of drama and gravitas in the presentation. So I developed a background template for the slides that featured a space shuttle along the side, its cargo bay doors open and the Canadarm extended, poised for duty. This left thecentral zone of each slide free and clear for titles and bullet points. I thought it was masterfully balanced. Then, newly initiated into the glories of custom slide animation, I did my thing. It only took me about six hours to transform what had been five flat slides into a full-on cinematic assault on the senses. Throughout the process, the famous white Hollywood sign kept popping into my