She left me more than a sweater. She left me a question I couldn’t face.

She left me more than a sweater. She left me a question I couldn’t face. For years, that red cardigan sat buried in the dark, like my guilt. I thought I’d outgrown it—outgrown her. Then my daughter found the note in the pocket, and every memory I’d tried to forget came roaring ba…

I didn’t realize, at eighteen, that love can look like “too much effort” from someone

you think will live forever. I only understood after she was gone,

when grief hardened into quiet regret and the cardigan became a painful relic I couldn’t touch.

Life layered itself over that moment — diplomas, wedding photos,

baby blankets — but beneath it all, that folded red wool waited, patient as memory.