Hers were eager greetings, with all the delight and innocence of a 1-year-old who hadn't yet grasped the concept of illness, let alone death.

Monday was Parker's last full day - the day doctors convinced her parents that the cancer spreading from her brain to her spine couldn't be stopped, even with the most experimental treatments. Mara Kelly and Jon Caldara decided that morning to remove the tube draining fluids from the tumor, and to take Parker home to die.

"We're trying to give her the most graceful passing possible," Kelly said while warming her baby in Monday's afternoon sun. "I know they tell us they have no hope. But I want her to live like she had a lifetime ahead of her, a lifetime of long, sunny days."

Parker was born on Nov. 21, 2000 - the first child of a mother who yearned for a baby and a father who feared the responsibility and distraction, and the possibility that his kid wouldn't love him, or even like him.

Everyone who knows the couple instantly saw changes in them both.

The 9-pound, 7-ounce baby girl with the blue denim eyes transfixed Caldara, who hosts radio and TV talk shows and heads the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden. Parker mellowed her often prickly father simply by grabbing his nose and sucking on it. When she waved, he called her "Wavy Waverson." When she clapped, she became "Clappy Clapperson." He was amazed by her sweet breath and dainty hands. By her ability to work a room like a starlet. By her gleeful screeches when he came home from work. And by her way of calling everything "ba."

"I guess I turned into one of those annoying parents who goo-goo over their kids," he said Monday, both laughing and crying about having hesitated to become a father. "Suddenly, because of Parker, I couldn't hide my emotions. I couldn't be sarcastic anymore. She made me into a better man, a better husband, no question about it."

Parker's affect on her mom was even more striking. Kelly had dabbled in several careers but hadn't found anything that completed her like having a child on whom she could lavish her gentleness and quiet strength.

"It's not me. It's Parker," she said. "She's more than the best of both of us."

"I don't know of any better mother than Mara," said her mother, Margaret.

Parker lived her 357 days in the comfort and calm of her home near downtown Boulder. Kelly nursed Parker months after most mothers turn to formula. Like many parents, she and Caldara worried about whether she was getting enough nutrients. They worried about choking, sunburns and diaper rash. They worried about raising their child in an angry, dangerous world. They enrolled Parker in baby swimming classes so she wouldn't be afraid of water. They bought her toys that whistled Mozart. As she took her first steps, they protected her from sharp corners and their wood-burning stove. They wrapped her tightly from the cold.

And so, naturally, the couple grew concerned when Parker started vomiting Nov. 4 and 5. Her pediatrician told them it was probably the flu. But when her symptoms persisted, they took her to Boulder Community Hospital on Nov. 6 for intravenous fluids.

That was Election Day, when voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to test a monorail designed to relieve mountain gridlock. Caldara, an outspoken mass-transit critic and former Regional Transportation District board chairman, led the opposition. Still, he stayed home most of the day to comfort his daughter.

When Parker hadn't recovered the next day, her pediatrician ordered a CT scan, which revealed the lemon-size tumor in her grapefruit-size skull.

"I don't know if I can do this. I don't know how to do this. I don't think I can," Caldara told Glenn Webb, his best friend.

Parker was transferred to Children's Hospital in Denver, where doctors ordered an MRI. It showed choroid plexus carcinoma, a cancer in the parts of the brain that produce spinal fluid. It almost always strikes kids younger than 18 months. Doctors at Children's treat about 50 brain tumors a year, most of which aren't fatal. But this kind of cancer kills nearly all its victims once it begins to spread. Because it's so rare - afflicting six Children's patients since 1995 - doctors say there's very little research about what causes it.

"Unfortunately, there's a bias toward researching more common cancers," said Nicholas Foreman, Children's head of neuro-oncology who handled Parker's case.

On Friday morning, pediatric neurosurgeon Michael Handler removed some tissue from Parker's skull and inserted a tube to drain the red-orange fluid from the tumor. That afternoon, he and Foreman said it was unlikely the cancer could be removed surgically or treated with radiation, which is unsafe for small children.

"That's when Jon and Mara just collapsed. I saw them devastated, their insides destroyed," said Paul, Caldara's older brother.

Handler had his own troubles with the prognosis.

"Surgeons like to think we can help our patients. It was frustrating beyond belief that there wasn't anything we could do," he said.

Kelly forced herself to eat so she could nurse Parker and sustain her through pangs of intense head pain. She grappled with disbelief that being a good mother isn't always enough.

"It just couldn't be a tumor," she said Friday. "We were going to live with Parker forever."

Caldara questioned why his little girl had to die.

"Maybe we had a too-perfect life," he said.

He and Kelly hoped that Parker didn't know what was happening, but they suspected she could sense the grief in their faces.

"She knows her parents are sad," Jon said. "It's like she's saying, "I know what's going on and I'm sorry.' "

Over the next few days, time stopped in Room 517. Family and friends took photos and videos of Parker. They kissed her. They made a plaster mold of her tiny hands and feet. No one paid attention to the war on terrorism or the American Airlines crash. Caldara's battle against the monorail seemed to fade from memory.

"I think we all figured there'd be time for all that later. So we celebrated Parker. We decided we needed to enjoy every moment we had left," Paul Caldara said.

On Sunday, Kelly and Caldara wrapped Parker in a pink blanket for a walk in the neighborhood around the hospital. A parade of 20 friends and family followed. They sang "Love me, Pooh" to the tune of the Beatles' "Love Me Do." Parker held a bunch of autumn leaves in her hand and smiled.

"It was the fresh air that everybody needed. The perfect sunny autumn Sunday. Like Parker, you didn't want it to end," Paul Caldara said.

Parker's biopsy results came back Monday. They confirmed what her doctors suspected - that she couldn't be saved. Relatives phoned hospitals nationwide, desperately searching for even the most experimental treatment. There was none.

Kelly and Caldara had two options: Implant a shunt in Parker's skull to temporarily ease the pressure from the tumor, or spare her the pain of surgery by removing the tube from her head and taking her home. They opted to keep her comfortable, despite their need for more time.

Numbed by morphine and a drug called Madazalam, Parker perked up Monday afternoon while her parents waited for doctors to release her. Her eyes were clear and her strength was up. Other than the tube in her head, she showed no sign of the cancer swelling inside her. Kelly and Caldara danced through the hallways, bobbing her up and down and slathering her with kisses. She waved at the kids passing by in the corridors with their own parents enduring their own worst nightmares.

"Thank you for coming back to life, if just for a little bit," Kelly told her. "How can you be so awake and so sick at the same time?"

Caldara's eyes filled with tears as he questioned their decision: "Let's just put in the shunt and walk across the planet with her."

Instead, they went home to Boulder on Monday afternoon, where they prepared for what they thought would be Parker's last few days. Only hours later, the tumor overcame her in her sleep. She died at 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, eight days before her first birthday.

Parker will be buried privately Thursday. A memorial service is planned for 10 a.m. Thursday, at Unity Church of Boulder, 2855 Folsom. A fund in her memory has been established at First Republic Bank, 203 Forest Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94301. The bank can be reached at 650-470-8808.