all these years later....

Monday was my mother’s birthday. She would have been 73, and even though the 6 year anniversary of her death is coming up next month, my heart still skips a beat when I think of living the rest of my life without her.

I miss my mom.
I want my mommy.

The bereft little girl within me stomps her feet and screams in outrage at being left alone.
The bereft woman within me lets the tears of sadness and longing roll down her cheeks in silence.

Even now, all these years later.

I knew I would miss her, I just didn’t realize how much. I miss our phone calls. I miss our conspiracies and our laughter. I miss the security of knowing that however rocky our relationship may have been, she was never more than a phone call away.

And our relationship was rocky. We loved and hated each other with equal passion. My mother and I had been estranged off and on for a lot of years before she died, but for the last year and a half of her life, we worked on putting the pieces of our broken relationship back together.

Sometimes it was really good and sometimes it was a painful rehash of past history and resentments. My mom hadn’t really changed, but I had. Distance had given me perspective, compassion and understanding. And maturity.

I finally understood it was never about me personally, and I let her off the hook. And in that last week of her life, I never left her side. I climbed up into the bed with her and held her head to my heart, stroking her forehead, kissing her temple - whispering all the things I wanted to say into her ear.

For the first few days, she resisted me, but by the end, she held my hand as tightly as I held hers, and tried really hard to whisper back.

Maybe that’s what I really grieve – that brief period of time when nothing else mattered, when there was no history (hers or mine) big enough to come between us in those last days.

On the last day the hospice chaplain came out of her room into the sunroom and told me she was hanging on because she didn’t want to leave me alone in the world. All these years later I still remember that October day so clearly, the crispness in the air, the smell of wood burning in the fireplace, and staring out the window at the birdhouses and chimes that lined the eaves around the deck as a soft breeze blew through.

I nodded my head as the chaplain told me what I needed to do, and I walked down the hallway to her room, looking at each family photo that hung on the wall before climbing back into the bed with her.  We lay there, face to face and I reassured her that I would be ok and she could go even though what I really wanted to do was hold on as tightly as I could and beg her not to leave me.

She died before I got the chance to ask her how I was supposed to live the rest of my life without her, because some days, even now, all these years later, I don’t know. I just don’t know.

Monday was my mother’s birthday. She would have been 73. And if she was still here, I would’ve flown out to be with her this week like I always did on her birthday. And I would have snuck out to buy her balloons for every year she was alive, and taken her out to dinner and made her wear a crown.

I miss that.
I miss her.
I want my mommy.

I so do.
Even now, even still, all these years later.

And Mom, if you’re reading this, Happy Birthday – I love you and I miss you.
More than either of us knew.