Alice

 “I never knew I loved you so much,” Alice said to me one night as we pressed our foreheads together, she in her hospice bed and me perched alongside. I felt the same, because it seemed to both of us that the love had been there all along, underlying everything, waiting to be recognized and completely known.

I have read Andrea's blog Go Ask Alice...when she's 94 for as long, I think, as she's been writing it. Alice died a couple of days ago, shortly after her 100th birthday, a landmark that she was determined to reach and did so. I always felt a special connection to Alice because she, too, was the mother of a young woman injured by a vaccination as a baby who grew up with terrible epilepsy and who died as a young adult. That Alice's daughter, Andrea's sister Marla, looked nearly identical to my Sophie in a deep and soulful way, bound me to both of them.

Thank you, Andrea, for sharing your mother with us, for sharing yourself, too. The world is richer for having her in it and sad to lose her, however long her life. I send you love and gratitude for the great gifts you've given us and to Alice the same for giving us you.