That was my choice.
Nobody pressured me.
Mom brought three ornaments.
Before hanging them, she asked:
“Would this be okay?”
One was a tiny rocket for Lily.
One was an ankylosaurus for Noah.
One was a coffee cup for Ethan.
I nodded.
We hung them together.
Then Mom whispered:
“I should have been there.”
I knew what she meant.
The funeral.
“Yes.”
She cried.
I did not tell her it was okay.
It wasn’t.
But I took her hand.
There are forms of reconciliation that do not require rewriting the
past.
PART 28 — EPILOGUE
Four years after the crash, I stood at a foundation event beside a
display containing three photographs.
Ethan laughing at a backyard barbecue.
Lily wearing cardboard astronaut wings.
Noah holding a plastic dinosaur upside down.
The foundation had helped fund training, family assistance, and research
partnerships.
The numbers mattered.
But I never introduced my family as statistics.
A young mother approached after the program.
Her husband had recently died in a roadway crash.
She looked exhausted.
“I don’t know how you did this,” she said.
I knew what she meant.
I also knew the dangerous answer.
There was no secret strength.
No morning when I woke healed.
