Over the next few months, Lily and I built a relationship that felt fragile and inevitable.
We spent hours going through the photos, laughing and crying, as we filled in the gaps of each other’s lives.
Lily told me about her favorite memory of Mark: him teaching her how to skip rocks at a lake near her grandparents’ house. I told her about his awful habit of singing off-key in the car to make me laugh.
We didn’t say it, but I think we both felt it.
This was healing.
As winter melted into spring, I realized the truth. What I’d found in the garage wasn’t just a piece of Mark’s past. It was an invitation to expand my life in a way I never thought possible.
I found myself wanting to spend more and more time with Lily.
One day I saw an advertisement for a photography class at the community college.
“Keen to go?” I asked Lily over the phone, hoping that she would say yes.
“Of course!” she screamed into the phone, her excitement tangible. “I’d love to go with you, Barbara.”
I picked her up and spent the rest of the day watching the light shine in Lily’s eyes as she realized this course could be a step into her future.
“Thank you,” she said when we stopped at a diner on the way home. “And I don’t mean for the waffles.
I mean for everything! I adore my grandparents. But I’ve missed the role of a mother in my life.
I know we’ve only known each other for a few months, but I really like having you in my life.”
I pushed my plate of fries toward her. She had the same strange habit that Mark did: dipping fries into the vanilla ice cream on the waffles or milkshakes.
And through this whole thing, I realized that I wasn’t mad at Mark. If I had to give up spending time with my child because of my current circumstances, my heart could be broken into a million pieces.
But now, I didn’t just gain a stepdaughter.
I gained a piece of Mark I never knew I needed.
Sometimes, grief feels like the end of a story. But on that morning, with a dusty safe and a trembling phone, I learned that it can also be the beginning of something new.
Source: amomama
