The author on her wedding day with her mother
“Your granddaughter needs to go to a hospital in Nashville for her depression,” I told my 95-year-old mother. “She’ll be away a few months.”
My mother sat in her easy chair in stony silence. After my father died at age 83, Mom moved to a retirement facility near us in Asheville, North Carolina. My glance around her tiny assisted-living home room landed on the bookshelf where she’d arranged photos of her seven grandchildren, including my daughter — all of them smiling for the camera.