Yesterday I turned 47. Today marks 28 years since my mom died by suicide.

For most of those 28 years, August 22 has been covered in sadness and darkness. There is something strange about having my birthday and the anniversary of her death sitting right beside each other on the calendar. One day celebrates my life. The next marks the day hers ended. For a long time, it was almost impossible to separate the two.

But today, I went for a walk.

As I walked, I listened to Patty Griffin’s Heavenly Day. I have heard the song many times, but something about it struck me differently today. It is about sharing a beautiful day with someone else, and I suddenly had this thought: I am sharing this heavenly day with my mom.

And it really is a heavenly day.

There were wildflowers everywhere. Birds. Butterflies. I saw a cardinal and later stopped to watch a great blue heron standing beside the water. I don’t know that any of those things need to be signs or mean something more than what they were. What mattered was that I noticed them.

My mom taught me to notice wildflowers. She taught me that they were beautiful, not weeds. I still can’t pass a patch of them without seeing them through her eyes. Today, surrounded by wildflowers, birds, and butterflies, I realized how many pieces of her still walk through this world with me.

Maybe that is why I felt closer to her today than I have in a long time. It felt like she was with me on my walk.

I have spent much of my life thinking about what I lost when my mom died. Today I found myself thinking about what she gave me. Not only a love of wildflowers, but pieces of who I am and how I see the world. And I found myself thinking differently about the last summer I had with her.

For 28 years, I have never viewed taking care of my mom that summer as a choice. It was simply what I did. She was struggling, and I took care of her. At 18 and 19 years old, I carried things I wasn’t prepared to carry. There are parts of that summer that caused trauma I have spent much of my adult life trying to understand.

But as I walked today, something shifted. I realized I chose it. I chose to take care of her. I chose to stay. I chose to do something incredibly hard because I loved her.

That realization doesn’t make what happened less painful. It doesn’t mean I should have had to carry what I carried. But there is power in recognizing my own agency in a story I have spent 28 years remembering largely through the lens of what happened to me.

Because if I chose to be there for the hard parts, I also chose the other parts.

There were heavenly moments that summer too. There was laughter. There was love. There was time together. There were moments when she was simply my mom and I was simply her daughter. There was the one unforgettable day when we chased a sunset and then sat on the car watching it together.

For years, the way that summer ended has cast such a long shadow that it has been easy to forget that darkness didn’t occupy every moment that came before it.

I chose those moments too.

I think I understand independence differently at 47 than I did when I was younger. I used to think being independent meant being able to handle everything myself. Carrying what needed to be carried. Taking care of people. Meeting the obligation. Doing the hard thing.

Now I think independence has much more to do with trusting myself.

Trusting myself to know what I need. Trusting myself when my choices don’t make sense to everyone else. Trusting myself enough to choose what brings me peace and joy. And sometimes, trusting myself enough to choose me over the obligations I have spent a lifetime believing I am supposed to carry.

There is something almost beautiful about realizing that on this particular day.

At 19, I chose my mom. I will never regret that choice. I am profoundly grateful for the time it gave us, even knowing how the story ended.

At 47, I am learning to choose me.

Maybe that feels especially significant because I don’t think my mom ever really learned how to choose herself. She spent so much of her life carrying what she believed she was supposed to carry. I wish she had known that choosing herself was allowed.

I wish she had gotten the chance to discover what I am only now beginning to understand.

Choosing yourself doesn’t mean you stop loving or caring for other people. It doesn’t mean you abandon your responsibilities. Sometimes it simply means trusting that your own life, your own joy, your own peace are worthy of being chosen too.

Maybe that is part of why I feel closer to my mom than ever. I feel like I am living the life she never got to live. Not a perfect life. Not a life without grief or hard things. But a life in which I am increasingly becoming comfortable with who I am. A life where I trust myself. A life where I choose joy without feeling like I have to apologize for it.

A life where August 22 can be beautiful.

That may be the biggest change of all.

For 28 years, this day has been defined by the fact that my mom died. Today, I didn’t forget that. I never could. But her death wasn’t the only thing I carried with me.

I carried what she taught me.

I saw the wildflowers as beautiful instead of weeds. I noticed the butterflies. I stopped for the birds. I stood by the water and watched a heron.

And I walked with my mom.

Twenty-eight years later, on a day that has held so much darkness, I finally allowed myself to see what she taught me to see all those years ago.

It was a heavenly day.