John and I moved to Anchorage the year Erin started first grade. It was a hard move; we had a great network of friends in Fairbanks that I didn't want to leave behind, a church that was more family than worship community, and an excellent private school. One of our decisions was that we would homeschool Erin for at least a few years.

People worry that homeschooled children will not be socialized and will grow up as hothouse flowers, unable to relate to people. This is a myth. With the exception of the truly whacky conspiracy theorist types, homeschoolers are the biggest bunch of community-creating organizers out there. We hadn't been in Anchorage very long before we found a homeschool group that was purposefully non-sectarian. It was chock full of little girls around Erin's age. We went ice skating every Wednesday morning and had field trips and craft activities at least a couple times a month. Just Saturday Erin was reflecting on her childhood and pronounced it "idyllic."

We had been involved for about half a year when Annie first came to the group. She brought another daughter Erin's age and two sons, the youngest of which was Amy's age and had a beautiful head full of curly hair. Amy thought Gabe was a girl for years.

Annie was about as earth mother as you can get. She ran a food co-op, ordering organic staples and produce that was shipped to her once a month and then distributed among the co-op members. She was the editor of the local newspaper in the small town of Girdwood, 35 miles south of Anchorage, where she and her family lived. She had been on the fast track to the Olympic ski team when a knee injury took her out of the running, and she had turned that intensity of focus onto raising her kids right and living as lightly on the earth as possible. Her husband was a massage therapist, she was a nurse-midwife, and they had a group of people around them that were like a corona around a shining sun of energy, bounty, grace and goodness.

She believed completely in the John Holt philosophy of homeschooling: that textbooks and formal lessons were a waste of time, and children learn best what they are curious about. Our kids attacked subjects with ferocity, and we learned much through play, through conversation, through the experience of life. We made our daughters costumes based on the colonial American Girls books, and more based on the Pilgrims. We had pilgrim-style Thanksgivings, complete with hand-carved trenchers and wooden utensils. We hiked in the woods and found fossils, then used the energy of that curiosity to explore geology and dinosaurs. We did chemistry in the kitchen and physics in the park. We spent time with, and talked to, and learned from our children.

And we weren't alone. There were about fifteen families involved with regularity in the homeschooling group. Outside of that group there were dozens of people who loved Annie and who drew inspiration from the deep font of her being. She advised, consoled, laughed with and wept for her friends. She delivered their babies and gave lactation advice at all hours and helped people decide when to stick with holistic medicines and when to get to a doctor. She was both ethereal and completely practical. She had a wicked sense of humor, no use for intolerance, and boundless love.

She was also a militant nurser. But when Gabe was three years old she came to skating one day and related how he had spooked her. Every time he started to nurse, he would burst into tears. "You're going to die, Mommy! You're gonna die before my birthday! I don't want you to die!" We agreed it was kind of creepy, but probably just a separation anxiety thing. We all laughed at our relief, though, when Gabe's birthday went by and the only noticeable change in Annie was that she was pregnant again.

She had Seanan at home, attended only by her husband. He was born in the night, while the other kids were asleep, so she hadn't even needed to call in kid-wrangling backup. He was a darling little guy, a happy and peaceful baby.

But for the first time, Annie got a breast infection on one side. Antibiotics helped for a while, then it would return. Seanan wouldn't take the breast on that side, and she pumped minimally, hoping it would dry up and get unclogged. It was chronic, and irritating.

On a Sunday morning in May as I was getting the kids ready for church, the phone rang. It was Annie. "I'm in the hospital," she said. "Can you come? I'm all alone. And they just told me...

"I have breast cancer."

The intern had told her all this while her husband was away, taking care of the kids. And then left her alone. I got there as quickly as I could. Annie had inflammatory breast cancer, a pernicious and deadly form that is hard to diagnose because it doesn't present as a tumor or lump but infects all the tissues. Breast infection is a common misdiagnosis. When it finally flares up, though, there is no missing it. Her breast was the size, shape, color and texture of a basketball. The cancer had already metastasized into liver and lungs.

I held her as she cried. "My babies! I'm not ready to die. Seanan won't even remember me." We cried together, because there was no comfort to be found.

She was there for a week, and it was clear that the doctors didn't expect her to ever leave.I knew one of the doctors, a good friend. He would not give a time frame, but told me that it was unlikely that she would respond to any treatment.

But respond she did. At the end of the week we took her home, though not before outraging a nurse by laughing hysterically at the "Chemotherapy and You" videos they had us watch - gallows humor is vital when you're staring into the abyss. We took her home and cared for her and for her kids. She lived for a year, until just past Seanan's second birthday. She recovered once from the brink of death in order to finish her goodbyes. Her husband took her to Colorado to say goodbye to the people and the mountains, and she died there.

She was 36.

Despite all the healthy living, despite her combat nursing, Annie had a timebomb inside her. The town where her father grew up was downwind of nuclear weapons testing, and there is an epidemic of inflammatory breast cancer in the daughters of the men who grew up there. All the clean living in the world could not have saved her from the poison in her DNA.

To this day, 6 years later, I still stumble on the truth that she is gone. I still cannot fathom that this vibrant, loving woman, this woman who wrapped her friends and family in glowing love, who gave so much life to others, lost hers so young.

I cannot help Annie now, but it is in her memory that I am raising money to further research. So that other children do not need to remember their mother from a distance, a photograph, the stories told by friends and family. Give if you can.