Mona Rodriguez
This answer contains spoilers…
(view spoiler)[The plot for Forty Years In A Day started because of a mystery in my own life. When I was in my teens, my sister told me that our father had been married before. Initially, I thought she was joking, but she convinced me that she had recently found out herself. I was shocked that I didn’t know this significant fact about my father. What else happened that I should know? Over the years, I wondered about his previous wife. Who was she? What did she look like? How did they meet? Is it possible they had children? Why did they divorce? My mother vaguely answered my questions. My father, I never asked. I questioned aunts and uncles about his first wife, but I sensed there were bits of their lives that were never to be disclosed.
It was over twenty years later and the night before my mother had brain surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in the center of her brain when she told me to look in their safe at home, there was something she wanted my siblings and me to see. The next day my mother underwent surgery and, unfortunately, she was never the same. We would have found this curious envelope that was tucked away in the safe when my sister, brother, and I were cleaning out the contents of their home, my childhood home, but for some reason, she had wanted us to know. It was a few days later by the time my sister and I went to their home. (My father was living with me at the time and had dementia). What we found in the safe was our parent’s Marriage License—they had married when my siblings and I were in our teens. What? Impossible!
When my parents died a few years later, I felt more compelled to delve into their past, but no one alive could (or would) tell me the whole story. That’s when I started to dig up the past and Forty Years In A Day was born.
(hide spoiler)]
It was over twenty years later and the night before my mother had brain surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in the center of her brain when she told me to look in their safe at home, there was something she wanted my siblings and me to see. The next day my mother underwent surgery and, unfortunately, she was never the same. We would have found this curious envelope that was tucked away in the safe when my sister, brother, and I were cleaning out the contents of their home, my childhood home, but for some reason, she had wanted us to know. It was a few days later by the time my sister and I went to their home. (My father was living with me at the time and had dementia). What we found in the safe was our parent’s Marriage License—they had married when my siblings and I were in our teens. What? Impossible!
When my parents died a few years later, I felt more compelled to delve into their past, but no one alive could (or would) tell me the whole story. That’s when I started to dig up the past and Forty Years In A Day was born.
(hide spoiler)]
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