I can’t remember how long it was after Ed died, but I remember being in a room just with my mom in San Francisco, and she murmured about him and finally admitted some level of regret or remorse about how she treated him when he was alive. I remember her voice quieted down, and she said, “I didn’t take good enough care of him. I should have. I didn’t take good enough care of him. I should have taken better care of him.” And she left it at that. I was pretty silent. And she was, too, after she said, that. And moments later, she changed the topic. I didn’t say much in response because… what was I supposed to say? There would have been nothing I could have said to make her feel better. Plus, to be frank, I agreed with her: No, she and my dad did not take good enough care of their son. They did not treat him well. That’s a very succinct summary of how their relationship was.

On the day before and the day we left San Francisco last month, I remember my mom taking a lighter tone and voice with me and saying repeatedly, “Take good care of Kaia.” She also said, “She’s all you have. Take very, very good care of Kaia. Don’t forget.” And while I know she was trying to be loving and caring when she said this to me, something about it just felt eerie, as though her message to me was echoing what she had said just years ago about not taking “good enough care” of her own son. It wasn’t what she said; it was her tone and how it felt like the same message she told herself about Ed. But instead here, she was directing it to me about my own daughter, her granddaughter, and warning me that if I didn’t take “good enough care” of my own daughter, that my own daughter would fall into a depression and want or attempt to end her own life.

That felt jarring to me. Kaia is turning three this December. She’s my sweet baby, even if she’s no longer really a baby anymore. She will always be my baby. I’m trying my very best to keep her safe, healthy, and happy. I want nothing more than to be her safe space for life. I want that as her mother, but I also want it because Ed and I never had that with our parents, and I want to do everything in my power to do good by Ed’s memory and give Kaia the love and support he never had. I am trying my very best. The thought of Kaia Pookie falling into a depression is enough to kill me. But we can control only what we can control, and I’m not going to obsess or worry about what is not present.