This is, in my experience, one of the forms grief takes-waiting with no certainty that what we wait for will ever appear.

After my mother's arrest, my grandfather became my primary caretaker and when he passed away I waited a long time for him to come back. I remember this-lying in bed at night, very still, very quiet, listening for the door to open, for my grandfather to walk in. I knew he was dead and I didn't know he was dead; I hoped, instead,that he was playing hard to get.

Until this time, my grandfather had been the one to drive me

every weekend to see my mother. In the mornings he and I went to the mailbox together to retrieve the envelopes my mother sent me filled with drawings and stories. In the evenings he helped me address the letters I mailed back to her.

 One year my mother asked my grandfather to buy us matching bird books so that during our visits or over the phone she could describe to me the birds she saw from the window of her cell. At home each night my grandfather and I paged through my book and imagined the birds my mother had seen that day.

After my grandfather's death I continued this practice on my own-taking the book off the shelf, paging through the pictures, memorizing bird types and traits. I did this with my mother in mind, trying to see what she saw, and I did this with my grandfather in mind,trying to coax him back to me.

When my grandmother passed away eight years later, I was

sixteen and old enough to know better, but maybe we are never

On the day my mother left me, nine children lost their fathers. I think about those children and I think about how long each of them must have waited for their father to return.  I have no way to know but I wonder sometimes if they are anything like me, if they have never been able to stop waiting. I wonder if the dream of return is something we will live with our whole lives.

That I have been able to share my life with my mother, even through separation, has never been something I could take for granted. And so my mother and I have always been committed to each other, grateful for each other.

When the judge sentenced my mother to live and die in prison he did it in the belief that she would never be able to change, that she could never understand the irreparable hurt she'd caused, could never bring anything to bear in this world except harm.

 I do not know the woman who stood before him then, who appeared so beyond redemption.

But I know the woman she has become,

the woman she has spent three decades becoming.