Welcome to Trace's Space! Happy Mother’s Day! Each and every holiday my mind gets consumed with memories of my mother. Mother’s Day for the past twenty six years has always been difficult, but as I get older I seem to miss my mother more so than ever.
I have had some very uncomfortable moments lately in coping with a loss that is not fresh but feels fresh every single day. That is how grief works, well for me anyway, no matter how long it has been it still feels like it just happened, and peeps, that’s okay!
Not only do I miss her, I miss the things that she has missed, birthdays, weddings, graduations, great grandchildren ( she would have loved all the babies). She has missed our failures and our triumps. She has missed our joy and our sorrows. But of all that saddens me, the thing that I find gut wrenching is the fact that my two youngest children remember very little of her.
I remember when she first passed that I struggled because I forgot the sound of her voice. Thankfully my sister in law video taped a couple family gatherings. But today we were talking and one of the kids said that they really don’t remember her...it made me so sad.
So I started sharing funny stuff about mom. I would describe her humor as awkward. She wasn’t really intentional in making people laugh, but she did. Hearing her bust a gut over something was truly special once she let go and let it happen. Sometimes I believe she saved laughter/joking for her closest friends or relatives. Honestly dad was the funny one, I guess you could say it was balanced.
Mom had the mother rage face that made you laugh...she wasn’t mean, she didn’t have to be, we were pretty good kids...we weren’t perfect, we got into trouble, but I don’t remember it ever being scary. Home was a safe place.
She loved movies. Everything from Cheech and Chong ( too funny, she tried not to laugh, Mike found her more funny than Up in Smoke) to Burt Renoylds, her favorite actor was Charles Bronson.
She was musically gifted, played piano by ear, and her musical tastes were all over the place (yeah, just like mine).
She took us to see “The Jerk”. I’ll leave it at that.
She was complicated, consumed by her love for her family, consumed by memories of her past, the most forgiving person I ever knew.
I believe her love for writing came from her love for history and geography. She was very intelligent, she had wanted to become a nurse. She did the crossword puzzle in the newspaper every day. She loved words, she had taken Latin in High School so she whizzed through those puzzles.
Any one was welcome in our home.
I guess when you think someone will be around forever you seem to not recognize the greatness of who they are until they are gone.
How I long to hear her mess up a perfectly good song by singing a rough harmony to it. How I long for a really well done hamburger. How I long for the smell of really strong coffee and ham. How I long for the break peddle being pushed by the passenger as I drove (yes and she’d grab your arm too). How I long to hear her laughing as she talked long distance to her cousin Barbara. How I long to see her taking care of someone who had lost everything, making sure their kids had. By golly I just want good macaroni salad, my sister in law has mastered the pie crust!
I miss her so much.
I would like to think that God let’s her have a little peek of what we have all become.
Yes this Mothers Day, I pay tribute to one of the greatest, mine. I find some comfort in knowing she will never suffer, and that she is with Jesus, and that we will see each other again someday! She would not dig this sadness I feel, but it’s okay, that’s what she would say, it’s okay... cherish your mother if you still have her, life is too short to not!
See you next time.
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