I don’t write very often.  When I do, I admit it’s usually to vent.  Nothing inspired by art or grace or whatever.  Just raw emotions I usually try to put at bay, but that I can’t ignore any longer.  Here’s the thing today and usually, lately:  I miss my mom.  She’s still here.  I can talk to her, see her, hug her, kiss her—and my favorite—I can still hold her hand.  But she’s not really here.  I guess that means I’m lucky and unlucky at the same time.

A childhood friend posted the other day on Facebook:  “What are you thankful for today?”  I never posted a response, but I did think long and hard about it.  I thought about Sandy Hook, I thought about Boston, I thought about Colorado, and places far away that I hear about on NPR after I drop my kids off at school in the morning—once the car is quiet and they’re out of earshot—and I thought:  How blessed am I?  Why do I sometimes feel so sad when I have every reason to be happy?  In spite of tragedies near and far, I feel safe in my home and in my hometown.  I have great kids.  I love my husband and still think I made the right choice after 13 years of marriage.  I get to travel with my family to “safe” and beautiful places that I only dreamed of dreaming about as a kid.  I am truly thankful for all of these things, so what do I have to be sad about?  I think about it all and I tell myself to be glad.  I am so lucky. Really, I am.  I have 3 beautiful, healthy, and kind children.  I love everything about my life.  And I honestly think if could click “pause” on my life—I’d do it right now.

But back to my mom.  My heart aches for those who lose their mothers too soon.  Words can never capture the comfort my mother brought me as a child, or the compassion she taught me as I grew from a child into an adult.  She had come so far in her own life that she was everything a kid could need in a mom.  She had a troubled childhood, but she had learned a lot about human nature from that experience.  She was street smart.  Most of my siblings and I have a gut-instinct about people that comes directly from her.  You get a vibe…you DON’T DOUBT IT.  Trust your gut.  Period.  She may never have finished college but she could call bullshit more quickly and accurately than most college graduates (and professors) I know.  Above all else, her resounding message was this:  never love money; always love God and each other. I can’t imagine who I’d be today if I hadn’t had her there every step of the way. 

Sometimes, though, her strength of character could be a bit much.  There wasn’t any gray area in her book.   I admit there were times when I didn’t feel like picking up the phone when she rang because I knew her so well I could anticipate the conversation before it took place.  Selfishly, there were times when I just wasn’t in the mood. 

Over the past 6 years, the every other day calls and the “did you go to church today?” check-ins have completely dwindled away.  I never thought I’d miss the latter, but I do.  At first the calls just slowed down--became less and less frequent.  And then they were gone.   I sometimes get slightly jealous of my husband and my friends whose moms are older than mine but who are still vibrant, interactive, and helpful with their children.  In their mothers’ faces, I see all the pride, joy and wonder that I used to see in my mom’s face when she got to see her grandkids.  My kids can’t remember that.  They know that “Mimi is sick,” and they love her and hug her and smile at her, but they don’t fully understand that she doesn’t know who they are.  I can always tell them how much she loves them, how excited she was when each of them was born, and how she came to help out and how much she loved holding them when they were babies. 

I can and often do remind them of the person she was. “You think I’m strict?  Well let me tell you what Mimi would have done….”  And in the back of my mind I’m also thinking, “if this happens to me, please always remember the good and bad of me for each other and for your kids too.  And when you are grown and feel at times like there’s nothing else you have in common, remember me and always let that be reason enough to love each other no matter what.”

And so it is that sometimes I get sad because although I’m a grown woman, I will always be my mother’s daughter.  And sometimes I miss her just like I did as a kid on the few occasions she was absent due to her own father’s illness.  This woman who knew real fear as a child understood how to put it at bay in her own children.  The comfort that the touch of her hand brought me as a child, my hand now brings her as an adult. Even when her eyes don’t recognize me, our hands’ embrace always makes her smile.  I’m thankful that she and I can still share that, and in spite of everything I miss about her…that makes me smile too.