They were dated across those final months of Mom’s life. Some were short, written in what I knew had been the most exhausted days. Others ran several pages, full of stories from her childhood, recipes for things we’d always made together, reminders to “never trust a man who doesn’t like dogs,” and “always wear sunscreen even if it looks cloudy, Alex, I mean it.”
In each one, she repeated the same theme in different words: her love for me and her trust that I would know what to defend when she was gone.
In the final letter, dated just a few days before she died, she’d written:
Remember, sweetheart, our strength isn’t in the walls of a house, but in the courage to protect what matters most. The house is just a symbol. You are the legacy.
Tears blurred the ink until the words became little rivers on the page.
I sat there until the sun sank and the sky turned violet, then deep blue, the waves whispering secrets against the shore.
The next morning brought another visitor.
My father.