The day after my dad’s funeral, a mysterious package arrived at our front door — addressed to me, from him.What I found inside didn’t just pull me out of grief.It pulled me into something stronger than goodbye. I’m a 21-year-old college student, and for most of my life, I thought I was the lucky kind of unlucky. The kind of unlucky where bad things happen early, but you survive them.But when I received my dad’s final gift, his words made one thing painfully clear: I was never unlucky at all.

I never thought I would outlive everyone I loved. For most of my life, I was sure I would go first. My husband, Harold, used to tease me about it. He would shake his head and say, “If you go before me, Mabel, I swear you’ll haunt me for throwing away your old Tupperware before you’re cold.”I would laugh and tell him, “You’d better not touch it, or I really will come back.” That’s what sixty years of marriage does to people.It gives you permission to joke about the end,

I thought my biggest mom problems would be public meltdowns in Target, fighting over shoes with lights, and stressing about preschool wait lists. I never imagined I’d come home one afternoon to find my three-year-old son alone in his crib… and our babysitter gone. Gone—except for a letter with my name on it. And a truth I never saw coming. I never thought I’d be the woman posting on Reddit about her missing babysitter. But here I am. My whole world is my son, Caleb. I’m 34. American. Suburbs. Minivan.