“Come soon,” my sister Helene whispers at the end of the telephone. “Mommy is waiting for you.”

I let out a sound halfway between a moan and a giggle. If I know anything, it’s that my mother will never die with me in the room. I am her baby, and she would never do that to me.

I arrive in Baltimore early the next day. Helene is waiting, and when we embrace we both sob. We adore our mother, and although she’s been getting more and more frail, a part of us doesn’t really believe she’s dying. She has been living with Helene and her husband, Harvey, for ten years, arriving shortly after she’d buried the last of her friends in Miami, and right before she went totally blind owing to macular degeneration. She was sorry not to be living on her own, but she grew to love her new home, where her family came and went, and where she held her grandchildren’s babies every day.

Harvey is sitting with my mother when we get back to the house, talking softly and rubbing her hands. I watch him for a minute, this man who took in my mother and always treats her like a precious jewel. He comes out when he sees me, holds me tight, and tells me that nothing has changed, that she’s still breathing and in a semi-coma. They stand back while I go in.

First thing I notice is that she’s dead. I lean down and kiss her, put my head on her chest and listen. Nothing. She is most definitely not breathing. I glance up at Helene and Harvey, who have moved even further back to give me more privacy. I don’t want to be the one to tell them, so I continue to kiss my mother, close her eyes and mouth. Eventually they come closer and I point out the obvious.

Later, after all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren have had a chance to say goodbye, the funeral director comes for the body. When Helene hands the man my mother’s burial information, a sheet of paper falls to the floor. Helene and my niece and I all stare at it — it has the familiar butterflies of my mother’s stationery, from the desk of Sylvia Frankel embossed across the top. We three freeze. It’s a good minute before my sister picks it up and reads it.

“If you’re reading this I’m dead . . .” it begins. “I want a simple graveside service and a plain pine box. You don’t have to spend a fortune on a coffin to prove to everyone how much you loved me. You proved that to me every day of my life. Love you, Mommy.”

We are speechless. Even dead she’s giving orders. We did not call her The General for nothing. Later that night we sort through her jewellery, take some of her clothing, and open her wallet. There’s $84 in it, and Helene and I each take our $42. “What are you going to do with yours?” my sister asks, only half kidding.

Two weeks later I’m on my way to Las Vegas. My mother loved it there — all the hoopla and yelling, the smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee with low-lifes at all hours, making new friends on every trip. She was out here a dozen times after she went blind; when she hit an $8,000 slot-machine jackpot one night, she just sat there until a floor person came and she explained that she couldn’t see a thing. They loved her there.

But I don’t. I hate The Strip — the acres of pretend buildings, the hordes in sweat-pants, the children who look as drugged as their parents. I choose a hotel a few blocks off The Strip, which I like because there’s not a slot machine in the place. I play poker every night, but don’t go to the big hotels. I find every out-of-the-way little poker room in town.

I keep my money in my left pocket, my mother’s $42 in the right. If I used her money at the poker table, I could make it into something — poker is what I’m good at. Very good. And my mother did like poker, so that wouldn’t really be cheating. But what she really loved was the slot machines and roulette; two things I’m not very familiar with. I decide to be true to her and only play her games. I take $20 for the roulette tables and play her numbers — 28, 0 and 00 — at every casino I go to. Nothing. I take $5 here and put it into the slots. Lose it. Another five there. Nada. Meanwhile, I’m playing poker every night and doing really well. It seems I am on the verge of losing all my mother’s money, just the way she almost always did.

Then I remember something she once told me: the airport slot machines are the loosest in Vegas because they want you to hear all the screaming when you get off the plane. I go to the airport with $10 left and put it into a video poker game; my mother rarely played them, but I figure it’s a slot machine anyway, and at least it’s something I can enjoy. First hand, I hit for $100. I cash out, because I don’t know what to do with myself. It seems such a good omen. I decide to put $10 back in and immediately hit for another $40. I play on that for a while, and cash out when I have $20 left. And that’s when I realise that my plane is leaving. I run to my gate and persuade them to let me on: lots of dirty looks and lectures, but I have $110 in my pocket from my mother. And it feels like a fortune.