Marilu Robertson Eder, the author’s mother, was born on 24 April 1939 and died on 20 September 2016. The account recalls that “ten years” have passed since her passing, and that the narrator thinks about it “most days”. In times of “turmoil”, she says she asks her mother and her father for advice, whose answers most often “in my dreams” come at first light.
The text then goes on to detail Marilu Eder’s path through Santa Clara University and her professional role. There, she completes an undergraduate course and earns a master’s degree. She subsequently “served as the head of the Detention Ministry at Elmwood Women’s Prison”. Everything is presented as part of a lifelong commitment to her children, while still maintaining a pace of study and responsibilities.
The account looks back on a significant health episode in 2013. The author explains that she “spent nearly two weeks in the hospital” and that she could have died. Her father and mother then spend the following month with her, helping her to walk, to “make sure I ate well, slept well”, and then to “built up to walking a mile each way to work.”
Finally, the text evokes the final stage of Marilu Eder’s life. During “the last year of her life”, she spends most of her time in bed. The author says that, in the end, Marilu asks her father that “it was time for her to go home”, and that the return is made with daily help provided mainly by the father while the author “sat outside her room at night”.
