because the things
joan therese
Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.
Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.
As I approach a milestone birthday I pause to reflect on how I feel about turning the page. I move beyond the measured days of those spent with my sweet mother. The days I have spent without my mom now outnumber those I shared with her. I pause. I reflect. I cry. I remember. I grieve. I cherish. I will be that age. The same age she was when she passed from this life to the next. prematurely. I will be the age she was with a few gray hairs , just starting to look mature as moms do as they are raising a house full of children through the teenage years. For my mom, she was guiding her four daughters through our high school, college and young adult lives. For me, I just sent my eldest to his first year of college,
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i am nearing the milesto e birthday a few weeks from now. am now the age my mother was when she passed away. i have already turned the page on the idea that my days living without her outnumber those we shared. i am sad about that. so often i have needed her. needing her is different than wanting her. it goes without saying that i have forever missed her tangible presence, but the days I have needed her have been felt deeply, too. i lost my mom as a very young woman. i was an adult, but barely. i returned from college, lived at home with my folks and started my first teaching job. my mother spent that school year in the hospital on the oncology floor with few trips back home. my older sister planned a wedding and was married that fall while my younger sisters were both in college, making it home on weekends as mom became weaker. we set up the family room at our house to make her comfortable when she was feeling well enough to come home, but we spent most nights at the hospital taking turns at her bedside and sleeping in chairs in the family room there. my aunt and uncle set up their camper in the hospital parking lot, we found some refuge there as we wanted more time with her and needed to stay close. at this overwhelmingly emotional time, i was keenly attentive to my mother and listened to her more closely. i looked at her face, and her hands. i observed her heart. for others. i touched her face and her hands. her face, her hands. my heart breaking. i learned so much from her in my young life but there was so much more to understand. i knew it then. i knew it during those tender days, that i would feel the loss. every day. i knew it the day i kissed her goodbye that i would have to take all that she had given me, all that she had taught me and all that she had shown me as i was forced to embark on my journey in this life without her. i knew it even more clearly as the days, months and years passed that i was a motherless daughter. without my mom in a tangible way. my faith tells me that I will see her again and i am grateful for that. however. my everyday daughter self shifted.
imy dear mom was raising her daughters who were in high school , college . young women. i will have just sent my eldest son to college for his freshmen year. i will have this birthday in october. not in the manner of my friends on their fiftieth. . no party with balloons and cheeky cards. i will spend my birthday with a full amd heavy heart, reflecting on the birthday that was her last. i have turned the page. |
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