I guess Nonny must remember that, too.

People in movies always have these deep, meaningful talks—or a surprise encounter with zombies—when they visit a cemetery. But I’m just not much good at one-sided conversations. I tried at first, but it never felt like I was talking to anyone but myself.

Still, I’m about out of other options.

So I push myself over the grass and brace my rear wheels against the back of Mom’s headstone. Then I flip the brakes on and slide from my chair to lie on the cool, soft grass. I stare up at the oak leaves and autumn sunlight and pale blue Carolina sky and try to think of what the heck to say.

“It’s all gone to hell, Mom” is what I come up with.

Okay, maybe not ideal cemetery language. AK_SalmonGranny must be rubbing off on me. I try to think what I’d tell Mom if she were lying beside me. Knowing her, she’d be pointing out clouds and telling me what states or countries they look like to her.

“I didn’t know it was going to be so hard,” I finally say.

What do I even mean? Dad and me, trying to make it all work without her and sometimes feeling like we’re barely hanging on. Me, getting older and slowly realizing how much Mom had always been fighting my corner all those years without my ever fully knowing.

Maybe, most of all, coming face-to-face with the awful truth that my first and best buffer against the whole stinking world isn’t ever coming back. And that Dad—as much as he loves me and would work himself six feet under for me—can’t ever be everything Mom was.

That maybe I haven’t been totally fair expecting him to be.

I blink hard and stare at the clouds some more. I think I see one that looks like Denmark, but I’ll have to double-check. I haven’t paid much attention to geography since Mom …

Then some of Mom’s words drift through my memory, and I almost smile.

The Divine Right of the Bipedal. It was something Mom used to say now and then. Especially if she was frustrated or mad about someone trying to tell her not to expect too much from me, or that they didn’t know “how she managed to cope with it all.”

“The Divine Right of the Bipedal,” she’d say, rolling her eyes like she’d heard the most dang-fool punchline ever. “Amazing how powerful that creed can make someone feel.”

I guess I never truly got it when I was little, or maybe it seemed like a joke she’d say when she was annoyed. Now I think I do.

I think she meant the world’s probably always going to be full of people who think they know how far I can go, what I should dream about.

What my family should—and shouldn’t—want for me.

That they’ve got the right to say to my face that they could never handle being like me.