For 2026, I set out to publish a book, All the Books She Never Wrote, for this Mother’s Day—a love letter to my mother, Lucy Bradley, who died at 99 in 2018. It had taken me eight years to write about the enduring bond between me and my mom as she passed with dignity on her own terms.
Then, as I was finishing the book, I had a stroke.
My disorder, called Aphasia, now affects the part of my brain that controls language. Suddenly, the very tools I had relied on all my life—words, sentences, the easy flow between thought and expression—were no longer fully there. Aphasia doesn’t mean I lost my memories or my intelligence. The words are still there. I just need to rebuild the roads to reach them.
Which is why I find myself thinking about my mother in a new way this Mother’s Day—not just about how she died, but about what we shared at the end. Before Lucy had turned near 100, she suffered a series of health setbacks and decided she was ready to go. She stopped eating, expecting it would take a few days…
Instead, her goodbye stretched into seven long weeks.
I kept vigil at her bedside in her small apartment, never knowing which moment would be our last.
Not long before she died, she gave me four rules to follow:
1. Laugh every day.
2. Read me a story.
3. Listen to your mother.
4. I repeat—listen to your mother.
We both laughed. It was one of our last moments together.
But in the days that followed, that second rule—read me a story—took on a deeper meaning than either of us could have imagined. Years earlier, we had talked about writing a book together. My mother loved mysteries, and we had even begun one—Saints and Sinners—before life pulled us in other directions. Now I sat beside her and read it aloud. Day after day. Page after page. Sometimes we laughed. Sometimes we didn’t. Somewhere in those weeks, I realized that this wasn’t just a story we had started. It was the one we had never finished.
I know now we weren’t alone in leaving that book unfinished. Most of us carry some version of it—the conversations we meant to have, the questions we never quite asked, the stories our parents held onto or thought we already knew. We assume there will be time. Another visit. Another afternoon. Another chance to say, “Tell me that again.” But life has a way of closing chapters before we’re ready.
And so now, after my stroke, I understand something else.
At the end of her life, my mother asked me to give her words.
Now, in a different way, I am learning how to find them again for myself.
This Mother’s Day, I find myself thinking about the stories we tell, and the ones we leave unfinished. If your mother is still here, ask her for one more story. Sit a little longer. Listen a little closer.
And if she isn’t, you may discover—as I am—that the words you thought were lost are still there, waiting for you to find your way back to them.
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