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Permit me to share something. It’s personal, yet universal. I hope it helps somebody.

This column was on hiatus last week. My mother was grievously ill; there were ventilator scenarios; she finally passed away.

Some of you have been there. For others, the biological inevitability of a loved one in a clinical, life-tethering setting awaits. As does the accompanying roller coaster ride of emotions, ethics and psychological anguish and irony. Those longest-of-long-shot hopes; that ultimate decision to uncouple a patient from the myriad of life-support tubes that contort features and convert life to existence. The vigil, the doubts, the tears, the sighs, the end.

There will be times when you can’t help but feel like an accomplice – or worse. And that’s not fair to you. The quality-of-life crucible is unique: a haunting, daunting dynamic.

On one hand you preternaturally root for a miracle – the kind that defies the reality of why an 83-year-old with emphysema and heart failure is in the critical care unit to begin with.

On the other hand, you perversely root for the heart-rate and respiratory numbers to head south to end the ordeal. And part of the ordeal, you well know, is the enervating impact on you. You feel selfish. Once again, not fair to you.

You see that a patient at the opposite end of the CCU has died. There’s a long family queue and audible crying. You begin to envy the closure crowd. It’s a normal reference point on the emotional continuum.

Despite the obvious solemnity of the situation, some visitor exchanges are veritable reunions – especially if it’s a Florida family member in a Doylestown, Pa., hospital. As hours turn to days and eventually into a fortnight, you can forget to take every such exchange into the corridor – or the waiting room. You feel like an infidel for disrespecting the patient who can’t participate.

You also find yourself jealous of those nearby patients who can interact normally with their visitors. You know that for them, there’s life after the CCU. You hear them weigh their dessert options as the nurse reads from the menu. You’d love for your mom to have to ponder the merits of vanilla pudding vs. orange sherbet. High-protein-nutrition-with-fiber diets — via those ready-to-hang, enteral feeding containers — don’t demand such decisions.

You come to welcome diversions – especially in the form of all the good people who volunteer. There were lay ministers who were generically consoling and — in the case of Doylestown Hospital — even a strolling harpist.

But most of all there were the CCU nurses. Theirs is an obvious, special calling. They know their nursing, but no less important, they know their empathy. If anyone feels another’s pain, it’s CCU nurses.

And they treated my mom with dignity; so don’t settle for less. She was often unresponsive, but she was never less than an adult human being who had lived a long, productive life — and didn’t deserve to be “honeyed” and “sweet-hearted” in her final days as if she were a child in a car-seat.

Critical communication

My mother didn’t have a living will. As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Some people sign them when death still seems largely an abstraction. Staring into the abyss and/or focusing on the imminent afterlife matters more. A meaningful, right-now sense of the patient’s deathbed wishes matters most.

So, make sure you ask.

Somebody needs to step up — in those intervals between morphine and Ativan injections — and communicate with the patient. Where there are discernible head gestures – as well as eyebrow arching – there are wishes that can be conveyed. But it’s no time for ambiguity in the name of compassion. Be precise as well as tender and loving.

As the oldest – and with a window of opportunity – I asked my mother what needed to be asked. My brother Tim accompanied me. Context was critical. I prefaced the line of inquiry with reminders of her legacy: children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and special friends across the years. A life that mattered in so many ways to so many people. She was there for us, and now we were here for her.

In the end, it came down to: “Ma, do you want us to continue to do all this for you? Is this worth it?”

The answers, not unlike the responses to the previous questions, were clear. In this case, emphatic “No” gestures.

I swallowed hard, sobbed quietly and looked behind me. My brother’s head was bowed, his shoulders heaving.

Then we made sure everybody was on board. Hospitals don’t want a consensus or a super majority. They like unanimity when it comes to families’ quality-of-life calls.

No abstraction

My mother was as feisty and opinionated as she was classy and dignified. She wanted, I knew in my core, to go out on her own terms, having lived a full 83-plus years. She wanted to go out pain free – and with as much dignity intact as possible. As a young woman, she was strikingly pretty; as a septuagenarian widow who frequented seniors’ dances, she was always the woman most frequently asked to dance by all those outnumbered men. Quality of life was no abstraction to her.

I knew that. She knew I knew. But I made sure.

It was enough to remind me of that Will Rogers line: “It’s only the inspiration of those who die that makes those who live realize what constitutes a useful life.” And Ida Rita O’Neill led one of those.

And not that it needs underscoring, but here’s literally the last thing she uttered at the hospital — to my brother Mike: “Don’t forget about the chicken soup I made; it’s in the refrigerator.”

Translation: “I’m still your mother; you’re still my child. The soup won’t last much longer. Eat it. It’s good for you.”It’s what mothers do.

To the very end.

He came. They saw. He conquered.

The Barack Obama “‘O’ Train” made a whistle-stop appearance in Tampa last week – at a private, $2,300-per-person fund-raiser and a later $25-per-person gathering at Ybor City’s Cuban Club. Things could not have gone any better for the Illinois senator and prominent presidential candidate – including threatening weather that turned benign just in time.

“Beyond our wildest expectations,” assessed Frank Sanchez, the CEO of Tampa’s Renaissance Steel who, as a member of Obama’s national financial committee as well as an adviser on Latin America, was the go-to guy for the fund-raising doubleheader.

“The campaign gave us a date, and we put it together in five weeks,” said Sanchez, who was working with about 100 volunteers and a core executive committee of seven members. “I felt tremendous pressure to deliver a good event,” he acknowledged. “We were hoping for 1,500 (at the Cuban Club) and we got 2,000. We were hoping for $200,000 (overall) and we raised $250,000.”

Up first was a noon Hyde Park assemblage hosted by Norma Gene Lykes. Contributors paid $2,300 apiece for mimosas, brunch fare and intimate Obaman sound bites and photo-ops. Sanchez was struck by the crowd’s composition.

“That definitely caught my eye,” noted Sanchez. “It was such a diverse crowd – whites, African-Americans, Hispanics, members of the Muslim community. And then it was the same thing at the Cuban Club. It’s one of the reasons Obama’s candidacy excites me. He quite literally has the capacity to bring people together — no matter what the differences.”

According to those present, Obama’s sense of humor and timing were impressive at the brunch. He also proved a patient listener. He worked the room as well as he worked that podium at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

The Cuban Club scene could not have been orchestrated any better had Buzby Berkeley been directing. The candidate was in full deus ex machina mode as he descended the iconic building’s fire-escape steps to the courtyard below — to the strains of “Stars & Stripes Forever” performed by members of the Florida A&M Marching Band. A demographic olio of ages, genders and hues awaited. As did a sea of signs (“Follow your heart, Bama,” “Hop on the ‘O’ Train”), t-shirts (“Barack & Roll”), souvenir hand fans, and uplifted cameras, autobiographies and spirits.

Then that inimitable, infectious smile. And that back-at-ya hand clap.

And that impassioned, populist message with those well-received applause lines.

The rhetoric of inclusion – delivered authentically enough by someone with roots in Kenya and Kansas, was front and center. He pivoted from retelling his recent political pilgrimage to Selma, Ala., to underscore that America needed another epiphany, another defining moment to rethink what Americans have in common and re-commit to a sense of community.

“Because of that march,” he stated, “I can run for president.”

This was not a crowd for whom Obama was not black enough or angry enough or experienced enough or specific enough. It was a crowd for whom Obama was not one of the usual suspects.

“We are all connected as people,” he told his animated audience. The reality of the uneducated, the unhealthy, the economically unhinged “diminishes all of us.”

To Sanchez, the Obama appeal transcends race. “I really don’t think they see a black person or a white person,” he observed. “I think they see a person with something to offer.”

They certainly saw a person who spoke forcefully against the sort of cynicism that has voters, declared Obama, too often sizing up their electoral choices as the “lesser of two evils” and settling for a government that “will do us no harm.”

“We can do better than that,” intoned Obama. “I feel the winds of change coming. I hope that this campaign becomes a vehicle for your hopes, for your dreams, for the aspirations you have for your children and grandchildren.”For historical perspective, he referenced the Boston Tea Party, the abolitionists’ fight against slavery, the struggle for women’s suffrage, the battle to unionize, the Selma freedom marches and John F. Kennedy’s determination to put a man on the moon–when it was less than certain it could be done.

“We’ve turned the page before,” he said. “Now let’s do it again. People are tired of the old okey-doke.”

What, presumably, they are not tired of is hearing about the next incarnation of the FDR social compact. It’s part of the basic Obama boilerplate — from “universal health care” to “an economy that serves all” – not just some.

“We’re at a crossroads in our history,” said Obama – from health care to energy to foreign policy. He wants this country’s entrepreneurial bent applied full bore to affect a “green economy” that would make America much less dependent on foreign oil and no longer susceptible to scenarios where “we end up funding both sides of the war on terrorism.”

On Iraq, per se, which induced his loudest crowd reaction, he reminded everyone that he was opposed to the war from the start and as president would “end the combat presence there.”He labeled it “a war that should never have been authorized and should have never been waged

This much we can all agree on. The status quo of Ashley Drive is unacceptable for anyone wanting to cross it. At rush hour it’s beyond daunting.

Now fast forward a few years. There’s the new Tampa Museum of Art, the new Children’s Museum, the new Curtis Hixon Park, the regional library and a finished, pedestrian-attracting Riverwalk. Then put actual people into the nearby SkyPoint and Element condos and the Twelve Hotel and Residences.

What had been merely unacceptable is now impossible.

That scary scenario has prompted Tampa city council member Linda Saul-Sena to recommend putting Ashley on a “road diet.”

In Saul-Senaspeak, that means reducing the six lanes to four and then weaning Ashley off of excess, cut-through traffic by diverting it to a redesigned Tampa Street.

To that end, she wants Mayor Pam Iorio to get her transportation consultants to reconfigure Tampa Street. Expect her to use her city council forum aggressively.

“We are spending over $100 million in public and private money on the west side of Ashley Drive and $100 million in private money is being spent on the east side,” pointedly notes Saul-Sena. “Let’s redesign this critical boulevard so that we can cross the street and live to tell!”

Suffice it to say, Saul-Sena wants Ashley more aesthetic as well as safer. She wants a real boulevard, one that would be an inducement to visitors and a signal to drivers that this is no longer the fastest, most expeditious route through downtown.

“Drivers are smart,” observes Saul-Sena. “If they move slowly on Ashley Drive and rapidly on Tampa Street, they will select the experience they want – scenic or speedy.”