My mom’s a sassy lady, at least what she’d want me to tell you. She’s 60 and still kicking it.

Ever since I can remember, she has been the breadwinner of the family. Day after day, she would soldier on as a registered nurse, dealing with frustrating patients, insubordinate assistants, and overly self-assured doctors, doing her best to assure the highest quality care. And every night, she would come home, fix dinner for the family, and subsequently go to sleep. In many ways, she’s always been a role model — her tenacity, her dedication, her energy — and while we’ve (almost) always gotten along, it would be hard to say that we were particularly close.

It’s fair to say that was at least in part due to how famously my father and I have always gotten along.

From a young age, my three older sisters instructed me that I had been his last and greatest hope for a male child and had fallen woefully short of this dream. So I’ve endeavored to be a bit of a tomboy and we’ve found a large amount of common ground, and on this we’ve built a solid relationship.

Whenever I would call home — at least once a day — it was Dad to whom I talked to. The dreaded “Would you like to talk to your mother?” question was always raised; somehow it seemed I only ever had time to talk to Dad, that Mom was an afterthought edged out by the stresses of collegiate and academic life. But that all changed recently.

Of all the names I’ve called my mother over the years during our squabbles and tribulations, the one I never expected was “widow.”

On a seemingly average Tuesday, she went to work, leaving my father to his typical day as a retiree. Two days prior to my nephew’s 10th birthday and four to Christmas, the family was engaged in the typical wrappings of holiday planning and coordination, though none of the four daughters were slated to return for family celebrations.

The next day, we were all assembled in my parents’ house, helping to plan the memorial ceremony for my father. It had been sudden — a massive heart attack — which is exactly what he would have wanted; he’d never been much for having people fuss over him. And this was the catalyst needed to reboot my relationship with my mother.

Through this communal pain, we began to relate to each other, not as ‘mother’ and ‘daughter,’ but with a greater sense of equality.

After all the years of her taking care of everyone — packing lunches, washing clothes, chauffeuring to various events and appointments — it was my turn to take care of her.

I cannot fathom the insurmountable amount of pain that she must be experiencing, to have her partner and best friend taken from her so suddenly, but I can listen and encourage her to seek support in her surroundings. Now everyday when I call, it is to talk to her, to hear about her day and her plans for the next. In a strange way, the loss of the man with whom we were arguably each closest brought us together.

I’ve always loved my mother, but now I’m sure that she knows. This ordeal has simultaneously been one of the worst experiences of my life and the time of my greatest reinvention, most notably in how my mother and I communicate. I see now that no conventions hold us into an awkward tango of deception and appeasement, but rather that I’ve been blessed with a person who loves me unconditionally and taught me how to do the same. I now look up to her for her strength and grace and perseverance, not as the superhero she once was, but as a real, fragile human being just like I tend to be.

I’m not usually a ‘silver lining’ kind of person. I will never say I’m thankful that my father is dead — that would be far from the truth, almost outrageously so.

But I have never felt so fortunate as to know my mother as I do now, to see her fully revealed as the tragically flawed person that’s just trying to scrape through another bad day.

She has been a source of comfort and constancy to me for 25 years, and now I know how to do the same for her. The karmic beauty of that is simply indescribable and I hope to do my best to make her proud, just like she makes me proud to have such a wonderfully human mother.

Lindsey is a graduate student.