My grandfather died in 1970, leaving my grandmother living in their old house alone. Shortly after that, we went to the animal shelter and picked out a little dog to accompany Grandma. The dog was named Penny.

Grandma and Penny quickly became very attached (喜爱的) to each other, and that attachment grew much _________as the years passed—they became very _________. When Grandma went to _________, Penny walked along and lay _________ her until she woke up. As Penny aged, she could no longer jump up on the _________ to lie next to Grandma, so she lay on the blanket beside the bed. Grandma never went anywhere without her partner by her side.

The time came when both my grandmother and Penny were becoming _________.Grandma had been sent to hospital several times, and Penny couldn’t _________ around very well. When Grandma was in hospital, Penny would sit at the window _________ out for the car bringing Grandma home and would _________ wait at the door when Grandma came through. Each homecoming was a great meeting again between the two.

On Christmas Day in 1985, Grandma was again taken to the hospital. Penny, __________, sat at the window watching out for the car bringing Grandma home. Two mornings later, I __________ she couldn’t stand and wouldn’t eat. Later, she had difficulty in breathing. I quickly __________ her to the hospital where Grandma stayed to let her see her __________ for the last time. There, as soon as Penny saw Grandma, Penny’s eyes brightened suddenly and then slowly __________. Grandma left this world several hours later.

After fifteen years of loving friendship, Grandma and Penny passed away on the same day. God had it all worked out — Penny was waiting at the door to __________ her when Grandma came home.

My 83-year-old mother was very ill and I had to put my life on hold to look after her. I ______ a bowl when she felt sick, and lit fires to keep her ______. I cooked and persuaded her to take a few______.

It’s hard to take care of a dying parent, whoever you are. It was ______ hard for me because I am a doctor myself. I couldn’t help looking at her in two different ways. The medical ______ saw the body with the coldness that medicine______. But the ______ saw the woman who had given birth to me, sent me off to college and had been a ______ presence in my life for over half a century. ______, my mother didn’t appreciate how hard it was for me to ______ her. I remember an exchange between her and the nurse who came to see her once a week: “You could get some more help with care.” “Oh, I don’t think I need that,” Mom said. Mom didn’t understand that the ______ would have taken some of the burden off me.

None of the treatments her doctors gave her ______. She refused painkillers for a long time, but finally the pain ______ her. When she accepted the painkillers, she accepted the ______ that she would die.

While living, being and dying with Mom I ______ something precious dawning. We became closer. We ______ so many stories from our past that it was ______ our memories had become one. In the past our relationship had been difficult. We had often ______. But when the end came, both of us ______ accepted that we looked at the world in different ways. We were daughter and mother and we loved each other. That was all that ______.

A little boy invited his mother to attend his elementary school’s first teacher-parent conference. To be little boy’s       _______ , she said she would go. This would be the first time that his classmates and teacher met his mother and he was embarrassed by her _______. Although she was a beautiful woman, there was a severe scar that _______nearly the entire right side of her face. The boy _______wanted to talk about why or how she got the scar.

At the conference, the people were_______by the kindness and natural beauty of his mother_______the scar, the little boy was still embarrassed and _______himself from everyone. He did, _______, got within earshot of a 　_________between his mother and his teacher, and heard them speaking. “How did you get the________on your face?” the teacher asked. The mother replied, “When my son was a baby, he was in a room that caught on fire .________was too afraid to go in because the fire was________,so I went in. As I was running towards his bed, I saw a beam(横梁) coming down and I placed myself over trying to__________him. I was knocked________but fortunately, a fireman came in and saved both of us.” She touched the ________side of her face. “This scar will be ________,but to this day, I have never ________doing what I did.” At this point, the little boy________running towards his mother with tears in his eyes. He hugged her and felt a great sense of the ________that his mother had made for him. He held her hand________for the rest of the day.