My youngest child looks very much like my mother-in-law,
who died two months before my oldest daughter was born.
I didn't know her for very long. We also didn't get along as well as I would have liked. We were born over four decades, an ocean and an entire continent apart. She was a widow and my husband was her only child. It was hard to relate to one another.
I loved her anyway. I often, nearly every day, think of her. It's hard not to. I think:
"Oh, there you are: swimsuit in the summer grass with ice cream all down your chin."
Every day loving some small enormous part of her with all of my whole entire heart, and it loves me right back.
