Stories are kept for us in the wind. Let its silky fingers wrap around you, and take you to the place that your heart aches to know, even though you cannot say where that is.

“I will not shed one tear for that woman,” my sister said, fists clenched and jaw set. My brother, Tom had been slightly kinder. “I don’t want to do a funeral for her” his voice said over the phone. As for me, I knew exactly who my mother was and I loved the quirky, terribly complex woman. My husband once described her as someone who liked to hear her self talk. And it was true that she had no qualms about steam rolling over anyone else who might try to join in the conversation.

An invented and reinvented woman, she had many sides: One minute she was teaching me to knit and the next she…