That night, when I finally got home, I charged my phone. No birthday messages—just a spam coupon for socks.
But the Post-it burned a hole in my pocket. I dialed.
A warm, gravelly voice answered. “Hello?”
“Hi,” I said. “This is Anna. Did you… give me a bag at St. Columba’s today?”
“Oh!” she brightened. “Yes, I hoped you’d call.”
“Wait—how did you know my mom?”
She paused. “I met her in the garden behind the hospice. She was sitting alone, so we talked. She told me about you. How proud she was.”
I swallowed hard. “She told you I’d be 31 today.”
“She wasn’t sure she’d make it,” Jinny said gently. “So she gave me that bag. She told me where to find you. Said you’d be too stubborn to take the day off.”
And she was right.
Finding My Way Back
Over the next few weeks, I visited Jinny often. She used to be a nurse too. Now she volunteered, arranging flowers, walking patients through sleepless nights.
She shared crossword puzzles, little candies wrapped in wax paper. Sometimes we spoke of my mom. Sometimes we didn’t.
One afternoon, she handed me a photo—my mother on a stone bench, smiling softly at something out of frame.
“This was the day she gave me the birthday bag,” Jinny said. “She asked me to tell you something, if you ever needed to hear it.”
I looked up, bracing myself.
“She said, ‘Tell Anna she was always enough. Even on the days she felt she wasn’t.’”
The tears came before I could stop them.
Small Steps Forward
Slowly, something shifted. I started baking again. Lemon cookies, mostly. I brought them to the nurses, left them in the break room with silly notes.
I found myself laughing when a patient’s teenage daughter hugged me after her father’s surgery. She smelled of cheap shampoo and hope.
And one day, Léonie reached out:
“I’m the worst friend. You showed up in my dream last night. Are you okay?”
I called her immediately. We talked for hours. She admitted she had been drowning—her mom’s early Alzheimer’s, her own exhaustion. She hadn’t forgotten my birthday. She just couldn’t face it.
We met for dinner that Sunday. She brought a single carrot cupcake with one candle.
“You get a redo,” she said.
I blew it out. No wishes. Just breath.
Loss, Again
Three months later, Jinny’s number lit up my phone. But it wasn’t her voice—it was her nephew’s.
“She passed away last night,” he told me. “She talked about you a lot. Said you made her feel useful again.”
I sat in the staff locker room, crying into my knees.
At her memorial, he handed me a small envelope. Inside was her handwriting:
“Dear Anna,
Kindness has long legs—it walks farther than we think. Your mom knew that. So do you.
Keep walking.
Love,
Jinny.”
