U.S. astronaut mourns mother from orbit

[Roon]

HOUSTON - Daniel M. Tani's 90-year-old mother died in an auto accident this week, but he has no way of getting home until late January. He must grieve from more than 200 miles away — in orbit, aboard the international space station.

It's a heartbreaking situation no other American astronaut has experienced. And it's made all the more tragic by Tani's devotion to his mother, Rose, who raised him and his siblings alone in suburban Chicago after their father died when he was 4.

"He is obviously pretty sad," the astronaut's brother, Richard Tani, said in Thursday's Chicago Sun-Times. "He was pretty close to her. We are all close to her. She was loved by everyone."

Tani's wife and a flight surgeon on the ground broke the news in a video conference call with the 46-year-old astronaut. But phone calls and e-mails from space are as close as Tani can get to the loving embrace of his family.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071221/ap_on_re_us/grieving_in_space;_ylt=AqqC9gxIffcnCHqyZ_ybBbRxieAA