I never really registered that my mother Rachael’s birthday was in the first week of fall.
That first September after her death, the grief was still overwhelming.
Back then, I relived her last few years on an endless loop.
The start of her Alzheimer’s journey. The changes after COVID-19 isolation. Sitting with her every Thursday at the senior center.
The look in her eyes told me she didn’t know me. My wife Marcia would say, “She knows we’re kind people and that’s all that matters.”
Then, the shock of seeing her in the ER after her fall. 160 hours in the ICU. The realization there would be no happy ending.
In those first years, I could only feel loss.
In early 2024, my stepfather Chuck gave me a box filled with decades of photographs. I didn't open it for over a year.
One Saturday, I put on the Longhorns game and flipped half-heartedly through photos of her life I was too young to remember, snapshots of our life together and images from their life I had never seen.
Partway through, I found a different kind of snapshot: four envelopes with five letters my grandmother wrote to my mother in 1965.
She was married at 18, a mom at 19 and on her own with a sick kid at 20.
At 24, she was trying to start anew.
A new state. A new job. A new relationship. A complicated divorce still unfolding back home.
The letters contained family news, questions about legal proceedings and more than one dig at my long-absent father. They hinted that people back home didn’t quite know where she was or what she was doing. In one, my grandmother wrote: “Stand on your own two feet. Make your own decisions. No leaning.”
Looking back, I see how those words shaped her life—and mine.
She raised me largely on her own at a time when single motherhood carried far more judgment than it does today. She worked. She adapted.
There was frustration, stress and struggle. Rental houses, new schools and job changes.
Instability.
Our life was equal parts chaos and resilience.
After a few more false starts, she met Chuck.
They built a life together that lasted over 50 years.
This September, I’m less interested in replaying the end.
And more interested in remembering how she lived.
Imperfectly. Often chaotically. With persistence.
The woman my grandmother told to stand on her own two feet did exactly that.
Maybe that’s what grief is teaching me. I can feel the loss.
And remember it’s only part of the story.
If any part of this feels familiar, I’d love to hear your story.
Just hit reply. I read every message.
— Mark
Your Next Chapter
Essays on transition, reinvention, and what comes next.
markwigginton.com
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