After learning she has cancer, Barbara starts writing letters to each of her four girls. Letters to be opened following her death. She also begins a journal that she fills with her favorite stories, confessions, and important things she wants her daughters to know. Things that she couldn't seem to articulate or voice while alive...for some reason or another.

Told from five different points-of-view: each of the four daughters and her second husband, the book is hard to follow and slightly choppy at times. Each daughter deals with her mother's death differently. You get heartbreaking insight into their anger, sadness, and eventual moving on. They come to find that their mother was a lot more complicated than they suspected and a little bit cooler than they ever thought. Barbara left behind a tangible reminder of the mother she was. Something the girls could turn too when they thought they no longer had anyone.

Ultimately, it was the lessons she taught them while alive that made them who they are, good and bad, and carried them through the darkest moments.