She lay in bed at the nursing home, at the edge of eternity, frail, but her mind engaged enough to deny the deepest wound in her broken life.

“Mama,” I said quietly, damming up my emotions, “It wasn’t ‘all right.’ It’s not just a normal part of family life.”

Her watery blue eyes hid from mine under heavy lids, and I felt her fingers squeeze my hand to calm me a little. She turned her powdery, pale cheek into the pillow and shut me out. How could I expect the careful lies knotted in her heart for almost 75 years to be untied in a single conversation?

 I had barely begun to loosen the same kind of knots in my own life.

In Redemption, the Door to Inner Freedom, I wrote one of seven stories in the book. Click here to read: “Coming Back.”