(...) I remembered the words in the note Mom left in my Survival Kit about using my imagination. Finally, after all this time, I felt its wheels begin to turn again, slowly at first, as if they were rusty, then with more confidence, as if someone had flipped on a switch. In the light of this awareness, I began to have faith that my mother was still with me, embedded and woven into this part of me I`d tried so hard to bury, the part that was most like her, my imagination. Even though she wasn`t here anymore, not literally, I could suddenly feel her everywhere, see her presence in everything, in the memories she created ad left for us, in the hope she had for our survival as a family, and that she`d packed into a series of brown paper lunch bags with big capital letters on the side.