I awoke very sad this morning as I do most mornings now. It seems like the reality of Mom's passing hits me hardest when I first awake and my heart feels very heavy. I was even more morose w/ it being Christmas Day, my mother gone, and my family 150 miles away. But when I entered the kitchen this morning, I heard Christmas music and my husband and daughters busy fixing breakfast. Mom always made Christmas morning special. Even last year at the age of 44, I found a present under the tree from Santa. I've got to stop focusing so much on my sadness and follow my husband's lead by working harder to make this Christmas special for my daughters.
I think it wasn't just having Christmas w/o Mom that was getting me down today; she didn't keep her promise to come back to visit us on Christmas Eve. At least I didn't feel her presence like I thought I would. Shouldn't I be able to still feel her? You can't love someone so deeply and not still feel them when they're gone, right? But this morning while we were out moving the 10+ inches of snow, my younger daughter came out to take pictures. And then I saw her. Mom used to love to take pictures of the big snowstorms. She'd come after all in the snowflakes and in my Maddy May. Mom loved the snow. She loved to go sledding w/ us and make snow angels and snowmen. My girls have wonderful memories of the snow families they used to make w/ Grandma. The day after Mom passed it snowed so my daughters and their little cousins made a snow-woman, complete w/ snow boobies.....just like Grandma taught them.
Maybe it's selfish to want to have her presence or her essence or her spirit here w/ me. She deserves to be in heaven. We've tried to comfort ourselves by thinking she's now reunited w/ her sister who she hadn't seen since she was 16 and her mother whom she hadn't seen since she was three. Yet there are brief moments when I feel her especially close. The night after she passed, I was walking the dog, and as I walked around the city park, I heard an owl. One of my brothers said he heard an owl in his backyard that same night. Owls hold the superstition of being harbingers of death or being present when a ghost is near. For a brief time I smiled until I left the park and heard the owl no more.
I guess part of me thinks that if I'm not sad, I'd be doing Mom an injustice. A slap in the face of her memory. But she loved to laugh, and we did it a lot together....the kind of laughter that brings tears to your eyes and makes it difficult to breathe. And then when the air finally does return to your lungs, you start all over again. Laughter over silly things, such as the names of people she once knew: Rosie Butts and Harry Wiener and then inverting the first letters to say Bosie Rutts and Warry Hiener. One of those things where you just had to be there to fully understand, I guess. So I guess she was w/ us last night after all while we played Mad Gab and snorted at our silliness.
I have to give myself permission to laugh and be happy. That will be my Christmas present to myself, or is it the present Mom left for me under the tree last night, and I'm just now ready to open it?
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