I had planned to begin by enumerating the things I miss most about my mother, but I changed my mind when I realized how impractical it would be to list all 2,000. Suffice it to say that the pain of missing her on the first yahrtzeit is just as acute as it was 12 months ago.

My mother often said, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Judging by the hundreds of letters we received during shiva, and for many months after that, lots of people must have cared about how much she knew