I still mother them….

People keep asking me lately, “Are you better?”

And I never really know how to answer that.

Better?

What does better even look like after your children die?

Do people think grief eventually folds itself up neatly and sits quietly in the corner? That one day you wake up and your brain no longer immediately goes to them before your feet even hit the floor?

The truth is I’m overwhelmed.

Overwhelmed by the sadness. The pity. The constant questions. What are you doing with her house? Her car? Her stuff? Are the kids okay? Are YOU okay?

And then the one that keeps coming: “Why are YOU cleaning out the house? Why wouldn’t you let people help?”

Because she was my daughter.

That’s why.

I did not want an army there.

I did not want chaos and people talking and sorting and deciding what mattered and what did not. I did not want people trying to be helpful while touching pieces of her life that still felt sacred to me.

So I took my best friend of over 40 years.

One person.

One safe person.

And we went to my daughter’s house.

The house where she died.

Even writing that still feels impossible somehow. Like my brain still rejects the sentence while my heart knows it’s true.

And there we were going through her life.

Junk mail still sitting there like the world still expected her to answer it. Her trillion pens because she was always grabbing a pen from somewhere. Little notebooks. Hair ties. Random receipts. Stuff I just bought her for Christmas. Cards I sent her.

Normal life sitting there frozen in place.

And then the photos.

Pictures of her and Vincent as little kids before life got complicated. Before addiction. Before funerals. Before trauma became part of every conversation we have.

Just my babies.

There was something about holding those pictures that knocked the air right out of me.

People think cleaning out a dead child’s house is about stuff.

It’s not.

It’s about touching the evidence that they were here.

It’s about realizing the world keeps moving while their shampoo is still in the shower and their favorite cup is still in the sink.

It’s about understanding that grief is sometimes standing in a bedroom holding a pen she touched and not being able to put it down.

And maybe that sounds ridiculous to people who have never lived this.

I don’t know.

But to me every little thing felt important because it belonged to her.

I know people wanted to help. I know people meant well.

But this felt like the last thing I could still do for my daughter.

One last act of mothering.

One last way to take care of her.

One last chance to handle her life gently.

So no. I did not want an army there.

I wanted quiet.

I wanted memory.

I wanted love.

And somehow I needed my daughter to know that even now… her mom still came when she needed me.