If She Were Here: "Are There Any Challenges You'd Like to Discuss?"

This is part of an ongoing series called If She Were Here — personal essays written as letters to my late mother, answering the prompts from Just Between Mom & Me as if she were the one asking.

Mom.

I hate managing Dad's estate. This sucks.

That's what I would have said the second you picked up the phone. No hello, no how are you — just that, the way I always did when something was sitting too heavy on my chest and I knew you'd understand before I even finished the sentence.

You would have let me say it. You wouldn't have flinched or told me to be grateful or reminded me that at least I had the chance to say goodbye. You would have just said I know, baby. And somehow that would have been enough to make me take a breath and keep going.

I keep reaching for that breath.

Honestly, I barely lived there. Dad's apartment was never really my home. And yet somehow the weight of it has landed almost entirely on me. The storm damage. The repairs. The calls. The decisions. The people — and there are so many people, Mom — who have opinions about what should happen to it. Everyone and their mother, as you used to say. Everyone except the one person whose voice I actually want to hear.

I know you would have known what to say about them. You had this gift for shutting down the noise without being unkind about it. I'm still learning that.

What I keep coming back to is something you used to say to me when I was taking on too much, when I was bending myself in half trying to hold things together that weren't entirely mine to hold: You don't have to be a martyr, Carrie.

I can hear it in your voice. The way you said it — not as a criticism, but as a permission slip. Like you were handing me something I didn't know I was allowed to have.

I need to hear it right now more than I've needed it in a long time.

Because here's the honest truth: this process has shown me things about people that I can't unsee. About who steps up and who doesn't. About how grief can make some people smaller and others somehow larger. About how being the one who shows up doesn't always come with recognition, and sometimes it comes with the opposite.

And I'm trying to hold all of that with grace. I really am.

But some days grace feels like a lot to ask.

I think what hurts most isn't the logistics — as exhausting as they are. It's doing it without you. When Dad first got sick and you were still here, I called you constantly. You were in far away and I was here and there were miles between us but your voice was always right there when I needed it. You made me feel less alone in it. You had a way of naming the unfairness of a thing without letting it swallow me whole.

Now I'm in it again, and the calls I want to make are going somewhere you can't pick up.

I'm figuring it out. I always do. That's the thing about being the one who shows up — eventually you just figure it out because the alternative is letting everything fall. But I want you to know it's heavy. I want you to know I'm tired in a way that sleep doesn't always fix. I want you to know I'm still looking for you in the quiet moments, still catching myself thinking I have to tell Mom about this.

And I want to believe — I do believe — that somewhere in the middle of all of this, you're telling me exactly what you always told me.

You don't have to be a martyr, Carrie.

I'm trying, Mom. I'm trying to let that be enough for today.

If this resonates with you — if you've ever been the one who shows up, who carries more than your share, who grieves not just a person but the specific comfort only they could give — Just Between Mom & Me was made for that space. It's a guided journal for the conversations that matter most, written for the women who were taught to care for everyone else first.

You can find it at caringcatalogs.etsy.com.