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My father and I are friends and my mother and I don't speak. It's a bummer. I miss her.

It was deeply interesting to observe my mother closely and to draw her. During those last months, she wasn't speaking much, if at all, and it was a way for me to be with her. It felt very natural.

I've always been very private, maybe because I discovered my mother, who is a wonderful lady, is very emotional.

I feel bad that I never discussed my mother's life and times as a career woman with her.

I remember the day my mother died, and it's still hard to talk about it. I just blocked it out.

I miss my mother very, very much.

I didn't write about my mother much in the third year after she died. I was still trying to get my argument straight: When her friends or our relatives wondered why I was still so hard on her, I could really lay out the case for what it had been like to be raised by someone who had loathed herself, her husband, even her own name.

I realized I didn't want there to be anything left unsaid with my mom. I didn't want there to be questions that I still had about who she was and what her life was like. And I didn't want her to have questions about me as an adult.