In choosing things to bring to make my mother's room her home, I brought the id badge from the library, where she had been a volunteer for more than forty years, as well as the plaque they gave her last year when she finally had to stop.

I brought a cross-stitch she'd made of Newport, R.I., her home town. A framed photo of the store her father and she opened in 1936. Photos of her and my father, a pin cushion I'd made for her in her favorite color. I brought her favorite stuffed animal. I brought a lap blanket that she'd bought in Norway back in the 70s: it's shades of orange and rust and brown, and she used to nap under it on the living room couch.

I brought her close to me. Like so much else this crappy, crappy year, this has been so hard. So difficult to navigate emotionally.

Home is where I can bury myself under my own blankets, and not come out until 2005.