At My Mother’s Funeral My Sister Thought She Had Won Until I Opened the Door

and I stayed to help my father sort through my mother’s things. That afternoon, in the top drawer of her nightstand, I found a soft leather journal. She had kept it for nearly ten years. Entry after entry held small worries, observations, gratitude, private fears. She wrote about Odora and me again and again, about the pain of watching her daughters’ continue reading …