Who is nobody
I am a 60ish year old woman from a mid sized city in Canada. I have lived here all my life as did my father and his family. I went to public school and graduated from a local high school. When young, I worked in a department store, behind the meat counter in a deli, and in a jewelry store. University was not for me as I lasted only one year. I transferred to community college and earned a diploma in business administration: finance. As I developed my skills in bookkeeping and accounting I worked for an engineer, an advertising agency and a retail store. In the early 80's I joined a start up charity working on AIDS issues. In a few years we went from 5 employees to 25 and my skills began to encompass fundraising and management.
In the 90's a new marriage and children opened the stay-at-home Mom phase of my life. I loved being at home with my 4 children watching them change and grow. The joy of contributing to their lives has never waned and I still revel in their successes and weep at their trials. This era brought with it the challenge of having a son with severe disabilities. After having a stroke at 7 weeks of age, his physical and brain development was very affected. His needs were complete as he was never able to feed himself, toilet himself, walk or talk. From infancy I knew that he would live a short life. The doctors predicted 2, 6, 11.... years until stopped listening as I realized that they had no more idea than I did as to how long he would last. He died in 2018 on June 23, 11 days after my mother died. He was 23 years old.
I do not remember much about the few years after he died. I went off the anti-depressant medication I had taken for over 10 years in order to start feeling again. In 2023 I realized that I could go on living without him and more importantly, that I wanted to. This epiphany has brought with it a new awareness of the world around me and enhanced appreciation of the people in my life.