wanted something.
My mother began crying.
Softly at first.
Then she reached for a tissue.
I didn’t look at her.
I’d spent too much of my life stopping whenever she cried.
I had always felt compelled to comfort her, even when her tears appeared in the middle of something she’d done to hurt me.
This time, I kept reading.
Near the end, Nana addressed the possibility of conflict.
She wrote that she expected her decision might be challenged.
She hoped it wouldn’t happen.
But if it did, she wanted me to remember that defending her wishes was not an act of cruelty toward the rest of the family.
My throat tightened.
I looked down at the final paragraph.
“Please don’t spend the rest of your life trying to persuade people to value you. You have already built a life worth being proud of. I only wish you could see it as clearly as I do.”
