Our mom, Patricia Donnelly, lived in the house where we grew up.

It was an old white house on Spa Creek in Annapolis, with a porch that wrapped around the front and a dock at the bottom of the garden. My dad built half of it with his own hands, before he passed away when I was twenty.

Mom was seventy-nine. She was small and sharp and funny, and she still did the crossword in pen.

Every Sunday, I drove her to church at St. Mary's. Then we had lunch at the diner on West Street. She always had the crab cake. I always had pancakes.

Then we'd go back to the house, and I'd fix whatever needed fixing. A dripping tap. A loose step on the porch. The furnace, once, at midnight in January, when it broke and she called me crying from the cold.

Lauren lived fifteen minutes away. Kyle lived forty minutes away. They came at Christmas, Thanksgiving and Mom's birthday. They posted photos in the family chat every time.

Best Mom in the world!! ❤️🎄

At Christmas, Kyle gave Mom an iPad. He set it up for her so she could video-call the grandkids.

She loved it. She learned to use it in a week.

That iPad turned out to be the most important present anyone ever gave her.

Kyle just didn't know it yet.