PART 3   I stared at the hospital bracelet in the lunchbox until the letters of my own name blurred.

else and still be carrying a part of your history in both hands.

My mother was not perfect.

For a long time, I wanted to make her perfect because grief is easier when we turn people into statues.

But she was not a statue.

She was a woman who loved deeply, feared deeply, worked too hard, hid too much, and still managed to place dignity on a paper plate continue reading …