That’s the thing. I know my mother loved my father, whatever their problems might have been. And I know how hard losing him and then really losing him was on her. So I try to tell myself that it was just a mistake, a lapse of memory or judgment brought on by everything that happened, that caused her to not give me the last gift my father ever sent me.

He had sent me stuff from the first week he landed in Sydney. Postcards, little books and toys he thought I’d like, things like that. But then they stopped. I’d assumed he was busy or just had ran out of trinkets to send me for awhile. He still called and talked to me on the phone every weekend, and he sounded fine then, so I didn’t think much of it at the time.

But even then, I didn’t know or understand all the inner workings of my parents’ relationship. They would still argue and hold grudges, and in the days leading up to his death, things had reached the point where my mother would immediately hand me the phone when he called, an almost accusatory look on her face as I took the receiver, as though talking to my father was somehow a betrayal.

Even now, I think about things like that and I realize I didn’t know my parents as well as I thought I did. I still don’t.

The last six weeks have been rough for me, and harder on my mother. She had a major stroke, and while she’s been coming back from it, we were told she would likely never be fully mobile again. All things considered, she got off relatively light—having to use a walker is much better than being bedbound and unable to talk, which were the worst case scenarios the doctors were giving when it first happened. But she's still been having to make adjustments in her life. Her ADLs, as the rehab therapist calls them. Activities of Daily Living.

She had to build back up to brushing her own teeth and hair. It sounds easy enough, but fine motor skills were giving her more problems than the balance and strength she needed to get off the bed and grab the walker. And there are some things she just couldn’t do any more. I’d set up people to come over and clean, help her reach things she had a hard time with, and generally make sure she was okay when I’m was back home and three hours away from her.