For seven years, my daughter Karen wanted nothing to do with me.<\/p>\n
She blamed me for divorcing her father, Nigel, and no matter how many letters, birthday cards, or messages I sent, she never answered.<\/p>\n
Still, every year on my birthday, I set a place for her at the table.<\/p>\n
It became a strange little ritual.<\/p>\n
Me, my new husband, and one empty chair.<\/p>\n
This year, something inside me finally broke.<\/p>\n
The morning after my birthday, I drove straight to Nigel\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
He opened the door looking older than I remembered.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t bother with small talk.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere is Karen? Is she okay?\u201d<\/p>\n
Nigel went completely still.<\/p>\n
Then he whispered, \u201cI thought you knew.\u201d<\/p>\n
My stomach dropped.<\/p>\n
He told me Karen had never completely disappeared from my life by choice.<\/p>\n
Three years earlier, she had been diagnosed with a serious illness and had moved closer to Nigel while receiving treatment.<\/p>\n
At first, she refused to tell me because she was still angry.<\/p>\n
But later, when she wanted to reach out, she became terrified that I would only come back out of pity.<\/p>\n
Nigel handed me a small box.<\/p>\n
Inside were dozens of letters Karen had written to me but never mailed.<\/p>\n
Some were angry.<\/p>\n
Some were apologetic.<\/p>\n
The last one simply said:<\/p>\n
\u201cI miss Mom. I just don\u2019t know how to undo all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karen was still alive.<\/p>\n
She was staying at a rehabilitation center less than an hour away.<\/p>\n
I drove there that same afternoon.<\/p>\n
When I walked into her room, she stared at me for several seconds.<\/p>\n
Then she started crying.<\/p>\n
So did I.<\/p>\n
Seven birthdays had passed with an empty chair.<\/p>\n
That year, I finally stopped waiting for her to come through my door.<\/p>\n
I went through hers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For seven years, my daughter Karen wanted nothing to do with me. She blamed me for divorcing her father, Nigel, and no matter how many letters, birthday cards, or messages I sent, she never answered. Still, every year on my birthday, I set a place for her at the table. It became a strange little …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9924,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9921\/revisions\/9924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}