Carrying Her With Me

It’s been a week since we buried Mom.

The service honoring her life was beautiful and fitting. We walked from the historic church to the cemetery and buried her alongside my father.

I can’t believe it’s been a week.

I can’t believe it’s been only a week.

In some ways, it still feels so tender and fresh. In others, the month since her death already feels distant—in a way I don’t particularly like.

With both of my parents now gone, I’ve found myself referring to myself as an orphan. It’s an odd feeling. Those people you knew would always love you—no matter what—are no longer on this earth.

I’ve written a lot here about third acts and choosing what comes next. About slowing down enough to notice the life happening around me.

But not every new chapter is one we choose.

Some begin because something—or someone—we love is suddenly no longer here.

On an evening walk this week, a neighbor said something I can’t stop thinking about.

“There aren’t puzzle pieces in the box that will fit the holes that have been left.”

He’s right.

The holes remain.

Maybe I’m not supposed to fill them.

Maybe I’m supposed to learn how to live with them, while carrying the memories of the people who left them with me.

This week I came home and weighed the bars of soap I’d made before we left. They’re still curing. I’m still learning. There is so much I don’t know yet about where Act III will go.

But I do know why this matters to me.

Long before Mom died, she had already become part of this little soap journey of mine. Alzheimer’s was part of what made me think so much about time—how we spend it, what we do with the years we’re given, and what we leave behind.

And there are little pieces of her woven into this journey already. Her old nursing scissors—Mimi’s scissors—sit among my soapmaking tools. The jar I used to infuse alkanet root in olive oil came from her house.

That infused oil went into my first purple soap.

I made that first loaf just days before she died. In fact, I had to leave home quickly to get to her bedside before it was time to cut the soap. So my daughter and granddaughter came to my house and cut that first purple loaf while I talked them through it from Mom’s bedside in Virginia.

At the time, it was simply what needed to be done.

Looking back now, there’s something incredibly meaningful to me about that moment—four generations of our family, connected by one little purple loaf of soap.

Somewhere along the way, I decided I wanted one of the soaps I create to mean more. I want a purple bar—or perhaps someday a collection of them—to help raise money for Alzheimer’s research, for better treatments and, most importantly, a cure.

I had no idea when I started this journey just how much that little purple bar would come to mean to me.

That mattered to me before August 30, 2026.

It matters even more now.

And as I find my way forward, I hope the life I live…

The things I notice…

The people I love…

The things I create…

And the way I spend however many Saturdays I’m given…

Will honor the woman who taught me so much about how to live in the first place.

I love you, Mom.