I found the tattered old notebook in a cardboard box labeled “Dresser” which was filled with some of the flotsam of my mother’s untidy life.

It lay buried under old Vanderbilt perfume bottles and knick-knacks. The leather binding was frayed and worn as if it had seen constant use before being shoved to the back of a dresser drawer. The yellowed pages were full of scribblings, even in the margins. It was as if the paper couldn’t contain her ideas.

My mother was a writer. Every year dad would buy her a copy of Writer’s Market which she used to collect addresses of publishers and magazines who might be interested in her stories. None ever were though. But I can’t remember a time in my life when she wasn’t banging away on a typewriter in the middle of the night or jotting down a character arc that had come to her over dinner. I have spiral binders full of her unfinished poetry and story outlines.

But this notebook was different. It contained the last of her writings. I could not have asked for a better gift.