Carolynne St. Pierre didn't want to go. Her family, who in her last days saw glimpses of life without Carolynne, didn't want her to either.

For nearly three years, the 44-year-old mother fought an aggressive liver cancer with constant support from her husband, Rich, and inspiration from her three children. She had worried often about not being able to watch 14-year-old Melissa grow up and start her own family, to help 12-year-old Brian through a difficult time at school and at home, and to answer 4-year-old Elijah when he called for her.

She died Saturday afternoon at home in Concord. In the end, Rich held her as her family huddled around. He told her it was okay to go.

"Thank you, baby, for fighting as long as you did," he said. "You did a great job."

For hours, her infrequent breaths had been long and loud as she struggled to pull oxygen in through the fluid that had filled her lungs. Then, suddenly, her mouth moved open and closed silently, and her eyes grew wide as her heartbeat slowed and stopped.

A long fight

In December, doctors told Carolynne there were no treatment options left. They said she wouldn't likely make it to the new year. But since Carolynne was diagnosed in April 2004 with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare cancer of the bile ducts, the St. Pierres had managed to find options when they were told there were none.

Days before a doctor would remove a third of her liver, Carolynne and Rich married. Their son, Elijah, was 1 year old then. Brian and Melissa Thone, children from Carolynne's first marriage, were 9 and 11.

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A year later, the cancer had returned. Carolynne resigned from a job she loved as a nursery nurse at Concord Hospital's The Family Place. She needed chemotherapy, but conventional drugs would do little to help. So the St. Pierres found an innovator in the field and made regular trips to his office in New York.

Last March, the St. Pierres asked the Monitor to follow them. The couple wanted to build a record of Carolynne's life for their children. Rich had lost his mother at age 7 and can't remember her.

Instead of despairing when they received the news in December, Carolynne and Rich threw a Christmas party to thank friends for their support. Later, she and Melissa stayed up late to watch the ball drop on New Year's Eve as the year clicked over to 2007.

On Jan. 5, Carolynne was admitted to Concord Hospital with an infection in her salivary gland. While there, she lost strength and her legs ballooned with fluid. She slept whole days. On Jan. 17, she came home from the hospital under hospice care. Her family began arriving from New York and New Jersey. The days that followed were a mixture of tragedy and comedy.

A hospice nurse and the Rev. Janet Lombardo stopped by daily. When Carolynne was alert, she asked Janet questions: Who will be with me when I die? What will happen to my body? Should the kids be there when it happens?

Family and nursing friends monitored Carolynne's pain and nausea and gave her medicine accordingly. They took turns editing her obituary. They held her hand as she slept.

In the evenings, cousin Anna Stoessinger, 32, mixed drinks. Carolynne joined in jokes and stories. When the women in her family laughed by her bedside one night, Rich propped Carolynne's head on a pillow so she could talk with them.

"It's okay," she said. "I'll use my baseball signs." She flicked catcher's signals with her fingers, then flipped Rich the bird in jest.

The two weeks that followed Carolynne's homecoming was the longest period her extended family had spent together in years, said her sister, Sara Matters, 45.

"I think she wants to be here, wants to be with us," she said. "She is enjoying the atmosphere that we've all created."

In the quiet at night, when the house would rest, Rich couldn't. "It's when the silence comes that a lot of this stuff will start to unearth," he said.

Instead, he would lie in bed next to Elijah, watching the red lights on a baby monitor rise and fall with Carolynne's breath as her mother, Kathryn Seigle, 67, watched over her in a downstairs bedroom.

The long battle for Carolynne's life became a marathon of watching her last days.

"This is what we wanted - longevity," Sara said. "You want someone to survive. You want them to live. The longer they live, the more stressful it is."

Earlier this month, Carolynne seemed stronger. Her cousin and sisters had returned home. Carolynne stood in the kitchen one evening when Elijah walked in from day care.

"You're standing on your own!" he said, and ran to wrap his arms around her leg.

Those days made Rich hopeful. But then Carolynne would vomit pills that she had taken weeks earlier.

"Nothing's working," he said.

At the beginning of last week, Carolynne's clarity turned to confusion. She slipped, dreamlike, into other times, remembering the days she spent as a girl on the shores of Lake Huron or planning her wedding with Rich. She slept more, and her face turned yellow with jaundice.

"My lovely wife is slipping away," Rich said. "The life we imagined is slipping away."

'Mommy's going away'

On Thursday, the hospice nurse said Carolynne would likely die within 48 hours. Her respirations had fallen to six per minute. It was nearly impossible to rouse her from sleep. The nurse said she probably wouldn't regain consciousness. Carolynne's family hurried back to New Hampshire.

That night, Brian sat by his mother's bed as visitors gathered around her. He often had asked questions about her condition - whether she felt pain, whether something could be done to help her breathe easier, who they would call when she died. Tonight he asked Rich why her muscles were twitching.

"Mom's dying, Brian," he said.

"Oh, yeah, yeah," Brian said and turned away.

When Rich tried to tell him again, Brian plugged his ears.

"Brian, take your fingers out of your ears, you're embarrassing yourself," Rich said.

After a long pause, Carolynne's sister Laura Cummins, 36, said, "It's okay Brian. I don't want to hear it either."

Even before Carolynne's illness, Rich's relationship with Brian was strained. Lately, Brian had been getting in trouble at school, where he's in the sixth grade. In recent weeks, Rich received daily calls from his principal.

Brian and Melissa have limited contact with their biological father. Rich said he knows that Brian feels as though he has lost both parents. "He's got a bum deal," he said.

Carolynne's sisters and cousin Anna had already assured her that they would help care for Brian. Rich said he is unsure how to move the family forward when he and Brian are battling each other.

One night last week, Rich told Brian that if he didn't change his behavior toward adults, he could be sent to boarding school. Brian protested. He said he didn't want to leave home.

Rich told him he didn't know what else to do. "I'm doing everything that people tell me I should do to help you," he said.

Later on Thursday, Rich placed Elijah down in the bed next to his mom. Elijah draped his arm across her chest. "Mom? Mommy? Mom's not waking up," he said to Rich. "Mom doesn't hear me."

Rich reminded him of the books they had read about people's bodies breaking.

"Mommy's going away," Rich said, starting to cry. "Mommy's dying."

When Elijah said she would never wake up "because she doesn't like me," Rich showed him the surgical scars on Carolynne's stomach and tried to explain what was happening to her body.

The normally boisterous boy would later tiptoe quietly down the stairs at about 6 a.m. on the day Carolynne died to listen at the doorway of the room where his dad dozed next to his mom. Then he walked slowly back to the stairs in the blue darkness of near-dawn and kneeled, peering between the rungs of the railing at people sprawled sleeping on the couches.

On Friday, Carolynne's pulse was weaker, her temples caved in from dehydration. In the afternoon, she opened her eyes for a few moments. Melissa sat at the computer in the kitchen. Rich asked her to join him beside her mom.

"Your mother's eyes are open, and I want her to see you," he said.

At first, Melissa refused. When Carolynne was in the hospital, Melissa had said she sometimes felt as if her mom was already gone. Since Carolynne had come home, she had kept her distance. After Rich prodded her again, she conceded.

"Melissa's here," Rich said to Carolynne. "She's watching you."

The next morning, Melissa stood at the end of her mother's bed quietly, her hair in two braids, and dressed for the state gymnastics meet. The adults in her family had explained to her that her mother would likely die that day. She chose to go to the meet anyway, and they let her. This was her own way of coping, they said.

Through the morning, Carolynne's hands turned blue and her breath became fast and shallow. At about 1:30 p.m., Ellie Duhaime and Melody Cooper-Mishkit, longtime friends from The Family Place, turned Carolynne on her side to give her some medicine. When they returned her to her back, her breathing changed immediately. They called for Rich. The family ran to Carolynne's bedside.

They held on to Carolynne and to each other until she died.

Brian hugged Rich tight around the waist.

"I love you," he said.

"I love you, too," Rich said.

Rich sobbed as he removed her wedding ring and his own and placed them on her chest. He fetched Elijah and sat with him next to Carolynne's body.

"Mom's gone," he said. He touched his son's chest. "She stays in here, with you now."

When Melissa came home hours later, she walked immediately upstairs to her room. She came down after prodding from the family's longtime baby sitter to go see her mom's body.

Later, Carolynne's cousin Anna said she thinks that Melissa and Brian will be proud to have shown such courage in watching their mother's long fight and in experiencing her eventual death.

"It will give them tremendous strength and take away - or at least diminish - the fear that they might have . . . of what happened," she said.

In the days immediately following Carolynne's death, they were already showing strength: Melissa went to another gymnastics meet on Sunday. Brian has talked to his mom, if only in spirit, each night and each morning before he and Anna fall asleep on the couch together. Both kids were back at school yesterday.

But Saturday night, when people from the funeral home came to take Carolynne's body, Brian sat with Ellie in the basement while Elijah ran around throwing toys.

"Where do they have her sleep? Are they going to put her in a bed?" Brian asked, as the stretcher that carried his mom's body was wheeled across the floor above his head. "She's going to be lonely."

Ellie told him that his mom's spirit is in heaven now, not in her body.

Rich called down to say they could come up. Carolynne's body was gone. Elijah ran up the stairs, calling for his mom.

(A funeral service for Carolynne St. Pierre will be held today at 4 p.m. at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Concord.)

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By CHELSEA CONABOY

Monitor staff