I began this process by wondering what it would mean for me to lay Momma to rest. But I did the opposite of laying her to rest—I brought her stories back to life, making her more real to me and less of a stranger. I worked to remember her. I was carrying around her dead body with me before, and now I carry the parts that are alive.

My whole world depended on Momma's. But I'm trying to embrace the present, and I've learned to admire smallness. Some days, I go on car rides with my sisters, and we listen to bouncy music and sing along, off-key, and we laugh as we recall stories from childhood, and I feel free.

When a play ends, the audience gets up and follows signs for the exit. For a few hours after Momma died, I lay in my bed and thought I might not ever be able to get up again--without her and her direction, I worried that I'd forget the basic rules of existing.

I took out my anger on my hair when Momma had none. Momma was dying, and her body was destroying itself from the inside out—and I didn’t want to live in a body that was healthy, or with a head full of hair, if she couldn’t have that, too. If her body was collapsing, I wanted to destroy mine.

Some types of growth are actually types of decay.

I stared at the hospice nurse's clipboard of notes, her purple scrubs, her file filled with Momma's health history, and I listened to the clicking of her pen and never looked her in the eye. She didn't belong in our home. She was just full of false information, cynical with age, and her pessimism about Momma's lifespan was making the house feel claustrophobic, like a coffin. She was closing the lid.