Have you run across notes, jottings observations your parent may have made. I have. My gosh. So poignant.

I appreciate your answers so very much. Thank you,all.

When my parents were cleaning the house that they had built and lived in for 40 years to downsize to a townhouse, I found a box of letters from my Dad to my Mom.  The letters were from Dad to Mom while he was in college and Mom was teaching in a high school 60 miles away.  Mom was embarrassed and did not want me to read them so she hid the box.  I found the box a few years later after Dad had died.  It was so beautiful to read how much Dad missed Mom 💖 and how much he was looking forward to their getting married during Christmas holiday so that he could spend weekends with Mom instead of staying with his parents who lived 15 miles from the town that  Mom was teaching at.  💑

I found some old journals of moms from when I was just a child. She was so unhappy even then. Her notes in recent years are much more jumbled. I told the doctor they remind me of the movie "A Beautiful Mind" about John Nash. Trying to make sense of her crumbling world. So sad.

Pops still has notes here and there to remind him of things. He has a list in his top drawer of names and who the people are. He keeps one in his pocket too. I've found some of his writings where he's trying to sort out the confusion in his mind. Yes, they are touching.

This may be normal to you to have a parent open to emotion. Ours was not. Stoic, like animal stoic. So to find this is to see a side of our mom, we never ever saw. It is sad, yes, but so interesting and heartening as well.