Her birthday and Mother’s Day being so close, we always made a trip down this time of year. Still do, but now it’s a trip to the cemetery and a visit to fill up hours in Dad’s day so he’s not left alone with it. I don’t have those random crying spells anymore. I find as time passes I can more easily set aside the loss of a parent and just be glad she’s not struggling and suffering anymore. What I’m struck by now are flashes of how odd it is that she’s gone. That I can’t tell her about something or show her something. That she will not be sitting in that chair waving with a big smile on her face when we go there Sunday. It feels strange that days roll on without her like they didn’t get the memo. This one very significant person in my life was plucked from existence…a whole story come to an end…and nothing. It’s just weird. Hard to reconcile the magnitude and simultaneous lack. I do like that the essence of her that wanders through my thoughts is no longer so much what she had been whittled down to and more what she was when she could live life more fully. Like that notion that when people get to heaven they revert to their young and capable selves except her heaven is in my head and she’s walking and laughing and holding my daughter and I really only think of the end on days like this where I feel compelled to mark the time, recall this time that last awful year. I’ll hang up her wind chime this weekend and next week she’ll be young again. I suppose her story isn’t quite at an end after all. ❤
