My mom and I take yearly trips to Pittsburgh to watch the Steelers play. It's always great but one year was especially awesome. It was just the two of us and we did a lot of fun things- went to a pizza place my uncle used to work at, went to her favorite bakery as a kid, drove around her neighborhood, explored downtown, etc. Not to mention, the Steelers won. But what really stands out was when we went to the cemetery. Her parents and brother are both buried in Pittsburgh and we usually make a trip to clean their stones and sometimes leave flowers. My moms brother committed suicide when I was 4, and this seriously impacted my mom. While she will talk about him glowingly, she struggles to bring up his depression and will leave the room if a show or movie has a suicide scene. Anyways, this time she just started talking about his depression and eventual suicide. It was deep. She was teaching me things I never knew about him. She just really let it all out and we were both crying.

Overall, the trip offered a bunch of different emotions, and I really value that conversation we had.