My mom has been “gone”,
“dead”, “passed away”, “passed on”, whatever you feel comfortable calling it
for 3 years, 4 months, and 2 days (or is it 3?). I prefer to focus on her
birthday, which is in one month and 6 days, than the day she died. I don’t miss
my mom every day. Think of her every day yes, but not necessarily miss her.
Just shy of my 18th
birthday I moved, by absolute choice, 1000 miles away from her to attend to
college. In the end I went to The University of Alabama because my paternal
grandfather and his brother went there, oh, and because they accepted me! But
all the schools I applied to were many states away. My wings were tucked and
aching to be spread for years leading up to my high school graduation. To me
college was a safe time/way/place to test them out. I didn’t miss her every day
then either. Not seeing her for months was part of my chosen life; we honestly
had a closer relationship the further I was physically away from her. For about
a year since I was 18 we lived 600 miles apart, border states, and to me, it
was close.
When my mom was diagnosed
with lung cancer in September 2007, my daughter was 12 days away from turning a
year old and my son was 3 months shy of 4 years old. Statistics were not good,
so we didn’t read them. What I knew was that we wouldn’t have her much longer,
so in the spirit of Randy Pausch I asked her to write letters to my beloved
children who she would never see grow, or even graduate from preschool it turns
out. I was reminded last June when my daughter graduated that I missed my sons’
three years prior because I was in Florida with her.
She wrote poems, we had long
conversations, we laughed, but the one thing she couldn’t do she said was to
write them letters, for every time she tried she cried (I’m sure sobbed is more
like it, but I wasn’t there). One of my favorite poems she wrote during that
time expresses that, and now over three years later that is the one thing when
thinking about her life and death that is sure to make me, too, cry. For
Hanukkah this year I made them “Shutterfly” books of my favorite photos of each
of them with her. I honestly cannot wait to give them to her them, only
hoping that at 6 and 8½ years old they will not find these as disappointing
gifts; when they only get one a night. I do think they are old enough to
appreciate them. I received the finished products a few months ago and have
looked through each a few times always smiling. But as I put them in a new
hiding spot today I had an unexpected good cry. In her words, “Sometimes you
just have to get the sad out.”
10/11/12 (She would have gotten a kick out of today's date)
