Sun, 15:36: Yet another odd thing that suddenly occurred to me about my mom: Whatever family secrets she might have had, she has now taken to her grave. Or the crematorium. You know what I mean.

She had already sort of borderline shared stuff she maybe shouldn’t have, in her altered mental state in the wake of her stroke in 2014. It made me realize something I never thought of before: over time, family secrets may not stay that way, if someone gets old enough—or mentally compromised enough—to forget they were a secret to begin with.

Nothing explosive was ever explicitly revealed in our case, but Mom did start kind of blabbing a little while back in a way that made it seem that could happen. And honestly, if there’s anything else out there that I’m better off not knowing, I’m glad I still don’t know it.