An affecting read on a slow news night, for the same reason that Salon piece by Rush Limbaugh’s cousin was so affecting: It shows us what a partisan warrior looks like when their armor is off.

When she began her final decline last fall, she had to go to her Connecticut doctor without me to find out what was wrong. This was the first time she didn’t seem to be getting better after a chemo treatment.

So I had been worrying about her appointment all day, but when I called her that night, she immediately turned the subject to me and asked me how my book was going.

I insisted on knowing if she had seen the doctor and she perked up and brightly told me that, oh yes, she had seen him, he had all my books in his office, he was worried about Obama, too, and he has such beautiful children!

Before she launched into a spirited discussion of his children’s extracurricular activities and triumphs on the athletic field, I had to ask her, “Mommy, did the doctor happen to say anything about why you’re feeling lousy?”

It turned out, of course, that it was the ovarian cancer — as well as the massive amounts of poison she had been receiving to kill the cancer over the past five years. That was the beginning of the end.

She wrote a similar eulogy for her father last year — and was mocked for it by the Huffington Post. I wonder how much hate mail she’ll get for this one.