The morning after the funeral, I expected nothing more than silence and the slow return to routine.
I had never assumed I would receive anything from her estate, so when her son called—angry, confused, nearly shouting—I braced myself, unsure what he could possibly want. He explained that while sorting through one of the older boxes his mother had kept tucked away, he had found a letter addressed not to him, but to me. His voice shook with a mix of frustration and bewilderment as he demanded answers I didn’t yet have.
Inside that letter, she had written words of softness and gratitude. She thanked me for being patient through her long, difficult decline, for offering comfort when she had no strength left. She admitted she couldn’t change her will without igniting chaos within the family, but she wanted me to know my small acts of kindness had mattered more to her than anything she could leave behind. Her handwriting, shaky yet resolute, carried a sense of peace that had been absent in her final days. But the real reason her son was so upset lay beneath the letter: a stack of receipts, scribbled notes, and old photographs revealing she had once planned to create a small trust for him—plans she never completed.