I’m writing from a seat in the sky, somewhere between Los Angeles, where I’ve lived for the last twenty-five years, and New York City, where I was born and raised.
I read this in the car with “calm sea waves” playing while my toddler sleeps in the backseat and cried when I got to the end, especially this lime, “ My mom used to bake me heart-shaped cakes which you never would have guessed if you’d seen her in a rage.” What a beautiful and real tribute. Happy Valentine’s Day and early birthday, Ally.
Oh gosh I remember the days of ocean waves and toddler car naps. Thank you for understanding, Rachel. I have realized more and more how unfortunate it was that she needed me to pretend she was the world’s best mom. I wish she would have let me love her as she was because I think the fact that she made us both live this lie might have made her doubt whether I loved her for the very complicated and flawed person she was. I don’t think she really understood that until the last three weeks of her life, so that is all the time we got to have an honest, open, genuinely loving relationship, and I wanted so much more than that. But I’m grateful I got three weeks. It would have been brutal to get no weeks. I’m sending you a lot of love. Hope your toddler took a nice long nap ♥️ Happy Valentine’s Day xo
Bending toward the light.... as ever and always, friend. This is heartbreakingly perfect. Thank you for seeing this world the way you do. And happy birthday. xx
Was thinking of this Ram Dass quote which you probably know, but it’s so good I’ll share just in case, because I always think of people as trees now.
“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.
The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”
I appreciate you, Kendall. You’re an extraordinary tree 🌳 And I’m sending you a lot of love. Happy Valentine’s Day xo
This is the best, and kind of magical as well, because just today my daughter was lamenting the fact that she feels different than all the other kids, and I immediately started talking about trees. How they're all different, and how that's what makes the forest so beautiful and diverse and strong. Maybe I've heard this quote somewhere along the way (I do love me some Ram Dass), or maybe we're just dipping into the same well. Either way, I really like the water. xx
I now live in the house I grew up in, because I inherited it when my dad passed a year and a half ago. I’m still unpacking, sorting, selling, throwing away, making those decisions physically, and emotionally and spiritually. There are dark secrets - some I knew, some I abruptly found out after he passed. I grieve the relationship I wanted, because he was incapable of accepting, seeing and loving me for who I am. And yes, as he was sick and I was the only one able to care for him at the time, he lived in a kind of denial he was dying, just as he insisted on pushing while he was getting older. I’m slowly going to make this home mine, but the complicated grief, the secrets, the sorrow at how he treated me, my mother, my brother. I adored my father as a little girl- but as soon as I became about 7/8 years old, asking questions, etc- I became annoying to him and he became more distant, controlling, condescending. Of course I went on to have relationships with men who carried one or more of those traits. Because of course I did.
Your grief is relatable because it feels hard to relate it to others- it’s incredibly personal. It’s not the “oh, I’ll miss my mom and her love” kind of thing. There’s deep disappointment, anger, sorrow at what was and could have been. And then, to sharpen the blade that twists in the heart- there were good memories. It wasn’t all 100% rotten hell. My dad had his good moments, showed glimpses to me of what could have been. But he was hiding his own trauma, his darkness right in front of me and gaslighting the shit out of me. I found cards I made him, a letter I wrote to my parents in first grade when I tried to run away. I wanted his love and acceptance so much.
Ally, when I read what you write about your mom, it feels like the conversations I have with my inner 9 year old girl, the angry letters I wrote to my dead father, the reckoning I’m going thru with my therapist all in one.
I feel like we could talk for a long time, Jen. I was also stunned by some of the items I found going through my mother’s drawers, closets, bedside table, files — and my stepdad asked me to do that about seven hours after she died. He could not handle living in a space with her stuff just, everywhere. I can’t say whether this was better or worse for me in retrospect, but I did go through the bulk of her belongings in those very early hours because I was afraid if I didn’t, he might get rid of her things or give them away. He wasn’t in his right mind, and I was heading back to California. It was a terrible, desperate feeling. There was one thing I found that confirmed a suspicion I’d had about what was causing this rage my mother had toward me all of my life. I’m sorry to be cryptic, it’s the kind of thing that could hurt other people, but it was shocking to find and I wondered if she’d left it there for me on purpose. I also wondered what would have happened if someone else had found it instead of me. It seemed like a reckless chance to take.
Complicated love is so painful. I thought about trying to take over the apartment myself and would have if there had been a way to do it. I’m sure it would have been a mixed blessing, though. I can’t even touch on my dad right now, I could almost laugh thinking about it. When I’m grieving over my mother intensely it brings up new rage for my dad because he hurt her so badly. She forgave him and I’d like to (I mostly had, I took care of him the last year of his life), but he created this fury in her and she took it out on me. So I am letting myself be re-furious with him for a while. As long as I feel like it. Anyway I am sending you love and hugs this Valentine’s Day and every day. To you, and to 9-year-old you ♥️
My nine year old self says it’s ok for you to be mad at your dad for awhile. We can only hold one thing in our inner child’s hearts at a time sometimes because it can all be too overwhelming. She also offers her winged unicorn plushie named Uriel (who was a big part of my childhood imagination giving comfort besides a stuffed rabbit named Bunny Hunny) for you to hold when you feel shitty. And thank you for the hugs.
I'm writing from my mom's house, where I'm looking after her after surgery. I flew across the ocean to do it. My relationship with her is straightforward, not complex, and for that, I am probably the most grateful of all the things I am grateful for, excepting my husband and kids. Coming "home" does strange things to your head. I haven't had to face leaving that childhood home behind for good, and it's one of those things I push from my mind. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. That just has to be good enough. I know there are times I've yelled at my kids when they've scared me--it's almost like that's what you do when someone who holds a place in your heart scares you. Instead of hugging them, you shake them by the shoulders and then hug them. That was something I never understood until I was a mother myself, why the first reaction is what seems like anger, but is usually just raw fear, like you're holding your heart in your hand and trying not to let it fall on the ground. Happy Valentine's Day, Ally. Happy Birthday. I hope you get a heart shaped cake, even if it's just a metaphorical one.
I am so genuinely happy for mothers and daughters who have uncomplicated love. I have that with my own daughter and it has been one of the best gifts of my life. I have that with my son, too. I was ready to have children and I wanted to have them, more than anything. My mother was not ready to have me, and even less so when things fell apart with my dad and then her mom died.
I hope your mama is okay, it’s so beautiful you can be there with her. And yes, no reason to pre-grieve anything, though I admit I rehearse for losses sometimes, or grieve while I love.
I know exactly what you mean about fear of loss looking like anger. And I think I’ve seen enough people grieving in the last few years to know it looks different on different people. Anyway, I am sending you and your mom a ton of love, Dina. Happy Valentine’s Day, I appreciate you very much♥️
I gotta believe the universe knows what she’s doing when she puts these bleeding heads and hearts in your path. The one time she gets comfort exactly right.
Been thinking of you. I know you’re carrying so much. I’m holding up a corner from here. 🤍
I don’t know if you’re Thelma and I’m Louise or it’s the other way around, I’m just so grateful you’re in my life. No driving off a cliff for us, though. Happy Valentine’s Day, Kate ♥️ and thank you for being such a good friend, always.
This is lovely. After having cleaned out my mother’s house when she died, the part about pictures in boxes, in albums, in drawers touched me. The conflict, too. Relationship is rarely, if ever, all one way, as life keeps teaching me. Thank you for sharing this beautiful piece.
It’s true, isn’t it? Most deep and long-lasting relationships have at least some thread of longing or loss somewhere, some friction or confusion or place where a thing didn’t get said or done. Emotional scar tissue, maybe. Some relationships just have a lot more than others.
The photographs, CW. My mother was extremely organized and controlling in almost all areas of her life — but when I started to think about it I realized it was all the superficial things — her appearance, always impeccable. The house, clean, couch pillows fluffed, Christmas card pictures on point. But then there was the drinking. All the appearances went out the window and she’d get sloppy. The mask would slip. There were other areas of her life that were out of control, too. Secrets she kept and places where she was wildly irresponsible. I feel like the photographs were somehow a reflection of that. Like all her relationships and her past were just thrown in boxes and drawers and up in shelves so no one could really put it all together. She didn’t count on me, though, I guess. Or maybe she did. I’m like a private investigator on a case, or a dog with a bone.
Thank you for your kind comments. Happy Valentine’s Day, lots of love to you ♥️
Reading this from my apartment in Dhaka. I came across this post from a recommendation from Rob Tourletot, so glad I found it. We’re all trying to connect aren’t we?!
I remember cleaning out the apartment my mother had lived in for 37 years and which was also the place of many drunken rageful scenes. I had come to what seemed like a good place of acceptance about her before she died. But when she was gone, the chasm left behind was so deep and frightening I didn't know how to be. So much of my life was about not being her, I forgot to be me. I didn't even know who that was.
Totally relate. I moved to CA when I was 29 because I felt so entangled in my mother’s alcoholism. I felt almost my entire self was *in reaction* to her, my personality, my thoughts about my worth, my outlook, my nervous system. I knew I had to put a geographical boundary there so I could figure out who I was outside the context of my mother and her drinking. So hugs, friend. I am glad to meet you and thankful you’re here ❤️🩹
I'm examining my relationship with my parents much more, now that they're both long gone. I loved them both dearly and still struggle with issues I learned and probably repeated.
Most of all, I miss the world that had them in it.
It’s been so interesting to me to realize my relationships with my parents have continued to evolve even though they are not here anymore. Of course when I stop to think about it, there’s nothing surprising about that, because I am continuing to evolve and so is the way I think about so many things. I suppose death seems so final. I wish I could pick up the phone and hear my mom’s voice, or get on a plane and see her. Couldn’t even finish writing that without a huge lump forming in my throat and tears welling up, but I feel her with me all the time and often find myself somewhere knowing what she would say and laughing to myself. I probably look a little crazy but that’s okay. Anyway, hugs to you Cate. It’s a long, interesting road.
I can't stop thinking about the apartment. Not everyone will understand what it's like to give up an apartment that size and price in NYC, but the fact that you lived there as a child and your memories of your mom are tied to that place -- that's so intense. Haunting is the word I keep coming back to. Sending you love.
Well, then I will share the awful news that it was $1283/month 😩😩😩 It really is such a combination of heartache and grief over leaving my childhood home and what feels like all these memories of my mom, and devastation that we are walking away from a unicorn. If there was ANY way around it…NYC laws with rent-controlled/rent-stabilized apartments are so intense and it’s a “red herring” building — many of the apartments are owned and there’s a co-op board. The landlord wanted the apartment back so he could sell it. I negotiated a good buyout deal so they can buy a house, but no deal will ever make sense. There’s more to it, but better for a message 😔
fascinating piece Ally. your words and images remain long after closing the window --i always read too much of my life in your writing, in the best possible way.
Sweet hearts. Life is almost never the simple story it may look to be on the surface. I'm glad you helped look after the man in Staples. One of my daughters said recently that she sometimes sees elderly people walking in the city and it makes her sad and also makes her fear getting old. A tender and honest observation.
The process of cleaning out my parents' condo (and then, for 12 years just my mom's) was grueling; we had just four days to do it. My brothers didn't seem to want to keep much, which left me feeling compelled to keep too much. And when I walked away, I realized I'd have no reason to go back there, not even to visit the brother who lives nearby. Because that's not where we'd be most likely to meet up, and the finality of it all was so painful. I took a lot of pictures of how it was before we disassembled it. They help me now. Sending you strength and peace, Ally.
It’s funny isn’t it? My brother has no attachment to anything, really, he’s not even interested in keeping his baby book that has photos and milestones and funny things he said, all in our mother’s handwriting. Meanwhile I am gobbling up all the photos and have a hard time parting with anything sentimental. But I live 3,000 miles away, so that isn’t convenient or realistic.
And yes, I don’t think the city is the easiest place for elderly people who are alone. I don’t think it’s easy anywhere though, and I will say New Yorkers tend to be kind. Anyway, it’s been an emotional few days to be sure, but I have had a nice birthday and I am sending you a lot of love ❤️
Forgot to mention….happy birthday! Birthdays are always a bit bittersweet after we lose our people and I hope yours is filled with joy and love alongside whatever form of grief shows up. Thank you for being you and sharing your writing with us!
I read this in the car with “calm sea waves” playing while my toddler sleeps in the backseat and cried when I got to the end, especially this lime, “ My mom used to bake me heart-shaped cakes which you never would have guessed if you’d seen her in a rage.” What a beautiful and real tribute. Happy Valentine’s Day and early birthday, Ally.
Oh gosh I remember the days of ocean waves and toddler car naps. Thank you for understanding, Rachel. I have realized more and more how unfortunate it was that she needed me to pretend she was the world’s best mom. I wish she would have let me love her as she was because I think the fact that she made us both live this lie might have made her doubt whether I loved her for the very complicated and flawed person she was. I don’t think she really understood that until the last three weeks of her life, so that is all the time we got to have an honest, open, genuinely loving relationship, and I wanted so much more than that. But I’m grateful I got three weeks. It would have been brutal to get no weeks. I’m sending you a lot of love. Hope your toddler took a nice long nap ♥️ Happy Valentine’s Day xo
Bending toward the light.... as ever and always, friend. This is heartbreakingly perfect. Thank you for seeing this world the way you do. And happy birthday. xx
Was thinking of this Ram Dass quote which you probably know, but it’s so good I’ll share just in case, because I always think of people as trees now.
“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.
The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”
I appreciate you, Kendall. You’re an extraordinary tree 🌳 And I’m sending you a lot of love. Happy Valentine’s Day xo
This is the best, and kind of magical as well, because just today my daughter was lamenting the fact that she feels different than all the other kids, and I immediately started talking about trees. How they're all different, and how that's what makes the forest so beautiful and diverse and strong. Maybe I've heard this quote somewhere along the way (I do love me some Ram Dass), or maybe we're just dipping into the same well. Either way, I really like the water. xx
I really like the water, too. And your daughter is so lucky you’re her mama ♥️🌳✨
Thank you, I'm not crying….
I now live in the house I grew up in, because I inherited it when my dad passed a year and a half ago. I’m still unpacking, sorting, selling, throwing away, making those decisions physically, and emotionally and spiritually. There are dark secrets - some I knew, some I abruptly found out after he passed. I grieve the relationship I wanted, because he was incapable of accepting, seeing and loving me for who I am. And yes, as he was sick and I was the only one able to care for him at the time, he lived in a kind of denial he was dying, just as he insisted on pushing while he was getting older. I’m slowly going to make this home mine, but the complicated grief, the secrets, the sorrow at how he treated me, my mother, my brother. I adored my father as a little girl- but as soon as I became about 7/8 years old, asking questions, etc- I became annoying to him and he became more distant, controlling, condescending. Of course I went on to have relationships with men who carried one or more of those traits. Because of course I did.
Your grief is relatable because it feels hard to relate it to others- it’s incredibly personal. It’s not the “oh, I’ll miss my mom and her love” kind of thing. There’s deep disappointment, anger, sorrow at what was and could have been. And then, to sharpen the blade that twists in the heart- there were good memories. It wasn’t all 100% rotten hell. My dad had his good moments, showed glimpses to me of what could have been. But he was hiding his own trauma, his darkness right in front of me and gaslighting the shit out of me. I found cards I made him, a letter I wrote to my parents in first grade when I tried to run away. I wanted his love and acceptance so much.
Ally, when I read what you write about your mom, it feels like the conversations I have with my inner 9 year old girl, the angry letters I wrote to my dead father, the reckoning I’m going thru with my therapist all in one.
It helps. Thank you.
I feel like we could talk for a long time, Jen. I was also stunned by some of the items I found going through my mother’s drawers, closets, bedside table, files — and my stepdad asked me to do that about seven hours after she died. He could not handle living in a space with her stuff just, everywhere. I can’t say whether this was better or worse for me in retrospect, but I did go through the bulk of her belongings in those very early hours because I was afraid if I didn’t, he might get rid of her things or give them away. He wasn’t in his right mind, and I was heading back to California. It was a terrible, desperate feeling. There was one thing I found that confirmed a suspicion I’d had about what was causing this rage my mother had toward me all of my life. I’m sorry to be cryptic, it’s the kind of thing that could hurt other people, but it was shocking to find and I wondered if she’d left it there for me on purpose. I also wondered what would have happened if someone else had found it instead of me. It seemed like a reckless chance to take.
Complicated love is so painful. I thought about trying to take over the apartment myself and would have if there had been a way to do it. I’m sure it would have been a mixed blessing, though. I can’t even touch on my dad right now, I could almost laugh thinking about it. When I’m grieving over my mother intensely it brings up new rage for my dad because he hurt her so badly. She forgave him and I’d like to (I mostly had, I took care of him the last year of his life), but he created this fury in her and she took it out on me. So I am letting myself be re-furious with him for a while. As long as I feel like it. Anyway I am sending you love and hugs this Valentine’s Day and every day. To you, and to 9-year-old you ♥️
My nine year old self says it’s ok for you to be mad at your dad for awhile. We can only hold one thing in our inner child’s hearts at a time sometimes because it can all be too overwhelming. She also offers her winged unicorn plushie named Uriel (who was a big part of my childhood imagination giving comfort besides a stuffed rabbit named Bunny Hunny) for you to hold when you feel shitty. And thank you for the hugs.
🥹🥹🦄🙏🏼❤️🩹
I'm writing from my mom's house, where I'm looking after her after surgery. I flew across the ocean to do it. My relationship with her is straightforward, not complex, and for that, I am probably the most grateful of all the things I am grateful for, excepting my husband and kids. Coming "home" does strange things to your head. I haven't had to face leaving that childhood home behind for good, and it's one of those things I push from my mind. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. That just has to be good enough. I know there are times I've yelled at my kids when they've scared me--it's almost like that's what you do when someone who holds a place in your heart scares you. Instead of hugging them, you shake them by the shoulders and then hug them. That was something I never understood until I was a mother myself, why the first reaction is what seems like anger, but is usually just raw fear, like you're holding your heart in your hand and trying not to let it fall on the ground. Happy Valentine's Day, Ally. Happy Birthday. I hope you get a heart shaped cake, even if it's just a metaphorical one.
I am so genuinely happy for mothers and daughters who have uncomplicated love. I have that with my own daughter and it has been one of the best gifts of my life. I have that with my son, too. I was ready to have children and I wanted to have them, more than anything. My mother was not ready to have me, and even less so when things fell apart with my dad and then her mom died.
I hope your mama is okay, it’s so beautiful you can be there with her. And yes, no reason to pre-grieve anything, though I admit I rehearse for losses sometimes, or grieve while I love.
I know exactly what you mean about fear of loss looking like anger. And I think I’ve seen enough people grieving in the last few years to know it looks different on different people. Anyway, I am sending you and your mom a ton of love, Dina. Happy Valentine’s Day, I appreciate you very much♥️
Ally❤️
Elissa ♥️♥️♥️ sending you so much love.
Ditto. Heading back down to NYC to do the same thing, likely blocks from you. Maybe we should try and meet in the middle. Be kind to yourself. ❤️
I gotta believe the universe knows what she’s doing when she puts these bleeding heads and hearts in your path. The one time she gets comfort exactly right.
Been thinking of you. I know you’re carrying so much. I’m holding up a corner from here. 🤍
I don’t know if you’re Thelma and I’m Louise or it’s the other way around, I’m just so grateful you’re in my life. No driving off a cliff for us, though. Happy Valentine’s Day, Kate ♥️ and thank you for being such a good friend, always.
Oh, it is surreal and heartbreaking to leave your childhood home for the last time, isn't it. 🫂
It really is. Maybe we are never fully ready for it. Sending you a lot of love, Janey. Happy Valentine’s Day ♥️
This is lovely. After having cleaned out my mother’s house when she died, the part about pictures in boxes, in albums, in drawers touched me. The conflict, too. Relationship is rarely, if ever, all one way, as life keeps teaching me. Thank you for sharing this beautiful piece.
It’s true, isn’t it? Most deep and long-lasting relationships have at least some thread of longing or loss somewhere, some friction or confusion or place where a thing didn’t get said or done. Emotional scar tissue, maybe. Some relationships just have a lot more than others.
The photographs, CW. My mother was extremely organized and controlling in almost all areas of her life — but when I started to think about it I realized it was all the superficial things — her appearance, always impeccable. The house, clean, couch pillows fluffed, Christmas card pictures on point. But then there was the drinking. All the appearances went out the window and she’d get sloppy. The mask would slip. There were other areas of her life that were out of control, too. Secrets she kept and places where she was wildly irresponsible. I feel like the photographs were somehow a reflection of that. Like all her relationships and her past were just thrown in boxes and drawers and up in shelves so no one could really put it all together. She didn’t count on me, though, I guess. Or maybe she did. I’m like a private investigator on a case, or a dog with a bone.
Thank you for your kind comments. Happy Valentine’s Day, lots of love to you ♥️
Reading this from my apartment in Dhaka. I came across this post from a recommendation from Rob Tourletot, so glad I found it. We’re all trying to connect aren’t we?!
Absolutely yes. Rob is a wonderful person and I am happy and thankful to be connected ☺️
I remember cleaning out the apartment my mother had lived in for 37 years and which was also the place of many drunken rageful scenes. I had come to what seemed like a good place of acceptance about her before she died. But when she was gone, the chasm left behind was so deep and frightening I didn't know how to be. So much of my life was about not being her, I forgot to be me. I didn't even know who that was.
Totally relate. I moved to CA when I was 29 because I felt so entangled in my mother’s alcoholism. I felt almost my entire self was *in reaction* to her, my personality, my thoughts about my worth, my outlook, my nervous system. I knew I had to put a geographical boundary there so I could figure out who I was outside the context of my mother and her drinking. So hugs, friend. I am glad to meet you and thankful you’re here ❤️🩹
I'm examining my relationship with my parents much more, now that they're both long gone. I loved them both dearly and still struggle with issues I learned and probably repeated.
Most of all, I miss the world that had them in it.
It’s been so interesting to me to realize my relationships with my parents have continued to evolve even though they are not here anymore. Of course when I stop to think about it, there’s nothing surprising about that, because I am continuing to evolve and so is the way I think about so many things. I suppose death seems so final. I wish I could pick up the phone and hear my mom’s voice, or get on a plane and see her. Couldn’t even finish writing that without a huge lump forming in my throat and tears welling up, but I feel her with me all the time and often find myself somewhere knowing what she would say and laughing to myself. I probably look a little crazy but that’s okay. Anyway, hugs to you Cate. It’s a long, interesting road.
I can't stop thinking about the apartment. Not everyone will understand what it's like to give up an apartment that size and price in NYC, but the fact that you lived there as a child and your memories of your mom are tied to that place -- that's so intense. Haunting is the word I keep coming back to. Sending you love.
Well, then I will share the awful news that it was $1283/month 😩😩😩 It really is such a combination of heartache and grief over leaving my childhood home and what feels like all these memories of my mom, and devastation that we are walking away from a unicorn. If there was ANY way around it…NYC laws with rent-controlled/rent-stabilized apartments are so intense and it’s a “red herring” building — many of the apartments are owned and there’s a co-op board. The landlord wanted the apartment back so he could sell it. I negotiated a good buyout deal so they can buy a house, but no deal will ever make sense. There’s more to it, but better for a message 😔
fascinating piece Ally. your words and images remain long after closing the window --i always read too much of my life in your writing, in the best possible way.
(and happiest of birthdays.)
Oh thank you, Chris…thank you, twice ☺️♥️
Sweet hearts. Life is almost never the simple story it may look to be on the surface. I'm glad you helped look after the man in Staples. One of my daughters said recently that she sometimes sees elderly people walking in the city and it makes her sad and also makes her fear getting old. A tender and honest observation.
The process of cleaning out my parents' condo (and then, for 12 years just my mom's) was grueling; we had just four days to do it. My brothers didn't seem to want to keep much, which left me feeling compelled to keep too much. And when I walked away, I realized I'd have no reason to go back there, not even to visit the brother who lives nearby. Because that's not where we'd be most likely to meet up, and the finality of it all was so painful. I took a lot of pictures of how it was before we disassembled it. They help me now. Sending you strength and peace, Ally.
It’s funny isn’t it? My brother has no attachment to anything, really, he’s not even interested in keeping his baby book that has photos and milestones and funny things he said, all in our mother’s handwriting. Meanwhile I am gobbling up all the photos and have a hard time parting with anything sentimental. But I live 3,000 miles away, so that isn’t convenient or realistic.
And yes, I don’t think the city is the easiest place for elderly people who are alone. I don’t think it’s easy anywhere though, and I will say New Yorkers tend to be kind. Anyway, it’s been an emotional few days to be sure, but I have had a nice birthday and I am sending you a lot of love ❤️
Well, FFS -- I forgot to say Happy Birthday!
Happy birthday!! 🎂
Hahaha. In my mind you did, so thank you (again)
Happy birthday 🎂 - I love the way you write.
Thank you so much…twice, Sheila! 🥹🙏🏼♥️
Forgot to mention….happy birthday! Birthdays are always a bit bittersweet after we lose our people and I hope yours is filled with joy and love alongside whatever form of grief shows up. Thank you for being you and sharing your writing with us!
Thank you so much, Mojgan 🙏🏼 I appreciate your kindness.