When my mother died, I cleaned out her room but I couldn’t find the one thing I desperately searched for, in every little box and packet, in every piece of paper, every letter, every single thing she kept and treasured for eighty-four years of her life.
I looked through her beloved jewellery collection, her rock and precious stone collection, the stamps that she lovingly placed into her stamp books over generations of time. Receipts and Christmas cards, but not one word to understand who she was, or what she believed in, no clue about how she felt or thought.
