When you live far away, you manage the loss of a parent in fits and starts. As you read this, I’m in New York laying her ashes to rest in the family vault. In January, we held her service at the funeral home where I attended both my grandparents’ funerals. As her only child, all this work falls to me. I had to plan the funeral and I wasn’t sure what she would want. I asked my aunt, my uncle and the funeral director, and they kept saying it was up to me. At one point I said, “I’m looking for someone to make choices for me.”

As her only child, I’m also her heir and executor, according to a will she wrote a decade ago. Thus, I’m also managing her estate, which means every day I email a law clerk about documents I have to find. I also now own a beautiful home, right along the Mohawk River. Unfortunately, I don’t live anywhere near the Mohawk River, but I have to pick up the mail every day and pay property taxes and school taxes. Sometimes I complain my mother left me all of her problems and no money to solve them, because there is no money until I decide on the house, which I can’t do for seven months due to New York state law. In the meantime, I have to pay all the bills.

At her service, I stood for three hours as people who knew my mother told me how generous she was. I stood with a student of hers, who sobbed while telling me about a time they were in a lockdown together. I stood with her co-worker who always felt better about having lunch duty if my mom was there. I had a conversation with her friend who wove baskets for me so that my mother could support her — if you ever visit my home, you’ll see many of those baskets. Everyone knew who I was and everyone knew my children. They were stunned by my son’s height and asked my daughter about her running. Many of them told me how proud of me my mother was. Because she talked about us all the time with everyone she knew. One person said to me, “Well, you know your mother.”

But the thing is, maybe I didn’t. One of the Ten Commandments says to honor thy father and mother. And I did when she was alive, even though our relationship was complicated. I included her in all of my children’s celebrations. I’m honoring her now, doing everything you do when a parent passes away. And in all this, maybe I’m seeing parts of my mother I had not seen before and maybe because of that, I can fix the relationship. Maybe I can forgive her and she can forgive me.

Thinking of all this reminded me of something that had always annoyed me. My mother was forever sending me boxes of stuff I didn’t need. Every time a box would arrive I’d think, good lord, what is she sending now? The last one that arrived was addressed to my son, whose favorite place to go in New York is a corner store known as Stewart’s, which are all over the Adirondacks, and in the summer he’s angling to get ice cream there after every meal. He opened the box and out came Stewart’s merchandise — a sweatshirt, a pair of socks, a bandana. I thought that was ridiculous. Why would anyone wear anything with Stewart’s on it? But my son wears it a lot. The sweatshirt is his favorite because it’s so soft. He already ruined the socks because he wore them so much that his toes poke out.

Listening to all those people telling me how generous she was makes those annoying boxes land differently. The fact that no one in my home will ever receive one again makes me miss those boxes. I haven’t fixed the relationship yet, but slowly and surely, maybe I will.

Leah Murray is a Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Political Science and the director of the Olene S. Walker Institute of Politics & Public Service at Weber State University. This commentary is provided through a partnership with Weber State. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent the institutional values or positions of the university.