Let me be very clear...

Let me be very clear as to who my Mom was.

My Mom was the beautiful one.

Yes, she has lots of different characteristics and qualities - but the one you couldn't ignore was that she was always beautiful.

Tiny - she was a size 2 when I got married.

Makeup - perfect. After all, she was a Texas woman and Texas women are always dressed to the nines. Her hair cut by one of the top stylist in Dallas.

And clothes... don't even get me started. Well, the woman taught me how to shop. We took two huge shopping trips a very. We arrived when the stores opened and many bags of clothes later, we left with our treasures.

I told someone later, I should have known something was wrong. She arrived at my house in jeans. That might not mean much to most people - but my mom does not do jeans.

And the next day she wore jeans. And every day after that she wore jeans. And a really ugly striped jacket that was 2 sized to small.

I remember telling my husband, "She doesn't look like my mother." But that was before we knew.

There were small signs.

She would start talking to one of my friends and not know when to stop. She would monopolize the conversation. But that could be anything.

She started to gain weight. She has always been very careful about what she ate and never weighed more than 112. Now she ate everything. She did not even seem to notice she was eating. She would snack on chocolate or bread and then announce she hadn't eaten all day and was hungry. She gained 10, 20, 30, 40 pounds... and so on.

But the signs were subtle. Hidden behind the mother that I knew.