Ten Years Ago

When you have children it feels almost as though every alumni parent is compelled to warn you of how quickly the time goes.  "The days are long but the years are short" is a favorite that  echos the sentiment of any and all exhausted parents across time and space.  Perhaps that is why the last ten years have passed so quickly.  Six and a half of them have been spent as a mom to our (now three!) girls.  

Agh, Mom.  You would LOVE them.  They are wild and unruly, love to roll down hills and tromp through streams fully clothed, re-home and name insects that they find around the yard, have "dance parties" in the living room, and sing at the top of their lungs in the car to songs you taught me 35 years ago in the back of our car on long trips.  And you would laugh at the things that they do to torment me because they are ALL the things I did to drive you crazy as well.  

I remember when the surgeon came in to relay the news of your diagnosis, how desperate I was to garner more time and how I sobbed when I realized that you would never know my children.  I didn't even know them yet but I could not fathom being a parent without my parent... without my person.  

To say that it has been a rough road is a bit of an understatement, but it has also been one of tremendous beauty and experience; things have unraveled me only to wrap me right back up again anew.  And, as much as I flail in the face of questions about the afterlife and spiritual world, I am steady in my sureness of you and your witness.  You've been along for the ride all along, woman.  

I can still hold your hand in my mind's eye and see you walking determinedly with a smile in my direction.  I hear your laugh and you calling my name from the top of the stairs.  Mostly these days I follow that inner voice that carries me home all over again... the one that reminds me "this too shall pass" or to embrace the beautiful world around me and just "live a little".  I hope and long for my girls to hear it too as they grow.  It has been the soundtrack to so much of my existence and what brings me back when I lose my way.  

Just now I am reminded of that old stitched Irish blessing that we had just outside the kitchen on Christmas Tree Hill (so eighties, am I right?)  I remember reading it and re-reading it, tracing the words with my fingers...

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face;

the rains fall soft upon your fields 

And until we meet again

May God hold you in the palm of His hand

I miss you beyond words Mama but I carry you with me everywhere I go. 

Seven Years Running

I realized today that I never put the Race for Hope post on Mama Marian's blog.  So, here it is... a bit late.  Thank you all for taking part in the race, donating, and continuing to support us personally and as a community.

How can that be?  It still doesn't quite seem real, as I'm sure it is for anyone who has lost someone they have loved so much.  

My mom was my epicenter and, in so many ways, still is.  Somewhere along her journey she told me that she hoped people would not "memorialize" her in such a way that people tend to do after someone dies.  She asked that I ensure we would not make her out to be bigger or better than she was during her time on this earth... not to "saintify her". I think of that often when I talk or write about her, especially in such sweeping phrases as the one above. 

And yet, that is WHY I feel so free to use such verbiage.  My mom was PERFECT in her absolute imperfection.  

She loved her wine, wore mom jeans before there were mom jeans, and was never quite in style.  She was underemployed and often outspoken.

Sometimes she stayed in her pajamas all day on the weekends and went barefoot outdoors 10 months out of the year.  Mama Marian sang unapologetic-ally loud and often accompanied her music with theatrics and peer pressure.  

She was self-admittedly perilous behind the wheel (though slower in her middle age years) and famously forgetful of reading glasses, various dates/times/deadlines, and her purpose for coming into any number of rooms in the house.  

She often shrunk and discolored the laundry and had a reckless compassion for animals and nature that infuriated neighbors and once depleted a small savings in the name of one dying hamster named Gee.  

I can count on one hand the number of times she picked me up from after-school events on time and she strong-armed me into playing the trumpet in 4th grade when all of my friends had already ordered their flutes and clarinets.  

My mom hated her job but made fast friends with her co-workers and spoke lovingly about several of her "kids" from the office.  There are tales of lime missiles being flung from her drink at a party and landing with precision against the head of one not-so-beloved acquaintance.  

One of my childhood friend's favorite stories is of waking up in the wee hours of the morning to my mom dancing across her coffee table during an extended session of "book club."  

Sometimes when I close my eyes I can picture her standing with one bare-foot pointed out in our kitchen, flour in her hands and on her clothes, and her head turned over her shoulder with a smile.  Usually she is laughing about forgetting an ingredient and still somehow ends up making the most fabulous blueberry pie of the summer.  

The thing is, what I love and remember most about my mom was her ability to be unabashedly human.  She did her best and laughed at her worst.  She taught me to embrace life as it comes and to notice and grab hold of beautiful moments as they arrive.  To do this in a way that is meaningful requires also embracing the not-so-beautiful things we want to gloss over and ignore, the times we want to forget and the parts of ourselves we would prefer to erase.  When I think of my mother it is that wholeness that I love and miss so much.  It is ALL of her that I honor and want others to remember.

My memory of my mother is shrouded in bigger than life imperfection that has made for a cataclysmic love and a proportionately great loss.  I like to think she would approve of a not-so-romanticized, honest remembrance of her and would tell you all unabashedly to get off your butts and run for a good cause.  

 http://www.braintumorcommunity.org/goto/MamaMarian16

Six Years

Grief.  What a brief, unassuming word for such a complex, harrowing, enormous experience.  

Desperation, longing, rawness, anguish, incredulity... Never have I wanted for something more in my life than to have back what I had for so long without even knowing.  Life's fragility hides well amidst our sense of what is mundane and ordinary.  We glimpse into it and pull back, promising ourselves to hold dear what is so precious and to remember its delicacy.  And then we carry on living.  

We cannot live in fear or in wait of death as that is not properly living at all.  But we can live with the awareness that our mundane and ordinary are so perfectly not.  They are tenuous, beautiful things that in time will be the makeup of the most bittersweet memories we would do anything to reclaim.    

 

Never Quite The Same

I remember telling someone when you were dying that I didn't want to be one of those people who was never quite the same after one or both of their parents died.  It always made me so sad to see someone so forever unwhole and, in many ways, I did not understand how someone could "let this happen".  I mean, wouldn't your loved one want you to move forward with your life and find happiness?  Knowing this, how hard could it be to eventually find wholeness again in all that life has to hold?

And here I am, almost six years later, feeling so raw and broken like you just died yesterday. Granted most days are not like today.  Much of the time I exist with your life and your death in the background of all that I am and all that I do.  I can find and even offer some peace in your memory and in the knowledge that what we had was something most do not in their lifetimes.  But moments and days unexpectedly leave me feeling desperate and angry, full of sorrow and visceral loneliness.  I cannot predict their arrivals but they seem to sweep in like vengeful stormclouds and there is not much I can do until they have raged through with heaviness and paralyzing presence.

Today I will write through the storm.  Other days I call on the people I love and ask them to sit in the heaviness with me and they always do.  But it's my heaviness and I must sometimes wait it out alone. I am so sad for the emptiness and the brokenness and so lonely for your complete company and for all of the memories that died with you.  I am angry that I do not have a mother anymore and so painfully envious that people twice my age do and will for years to come.  Most of all I feel forever broken and unwhole... just as I hoped I would not.  I hate that I am writing this because it is so ugly but only brutal honestly and patience seem to weather these storms.

Five Years

I woke up to a day just like the one five years ago; the bluest of skies, lightest of breezes, and sweetest of late summer/early fall weather.  There are some moments and experiences that I feel I cannot wholly contribute to coincidence and today feels like one of them.  Just as I did the day I learned our daughter would be coming into the world right around your birthday in November.  Grief is complicated like that.  The pain can cut so unbearably deep and then a memory or a moment can turn on a dime and bring about all of the goodness that was inherent before there was death.  

While going through some old emails today I came across this one from 2006 in which my mom reflects on her own mother's death: 

"But speaking of my Mom, it really does bug me that it's so final.  Death is so final!  I can't call her, I can't talk to her, I can only picture her in my head doing the things I like to remember, like laughing at my jokes, and allowing me to try to teach her to dance when I was in college, and coming to help me when Jeff was born and I had no idea how to anything for a baby,and trying to tell me that I shouldn't scold you young'uns about every little thing (that didn't work, either), yada yada, yada.....  I miss my good Mom!"

My mom wrote those words about her mom and I have so often written and said similar words myself. The finality of death is what inherently baffles and frustrates us all. On days like today I am reminded that there are pieces of my mom everywhere and she is still present, albeit not as she once was.  She is here in me and even in my daughter and a part of me just knows she is here in this gentle breeze and warm autumn sun.

Fall

It is one of those incredible fall days; there is just enough of a breeze to scatter the falling leaves and the sun perfectly warms the reddening treetops to let a golden glow shine below.  It is one of these days that I cannot shake the sadness that you are no longer here to remark on the beauty of such weather. I try to tell myself what you so often reminded me; sometimes you just have to be sad for a while.  This is easier said than done.  I want this terrible ache to subside and this hollow in my chest to stop reminding me of its presence and I want these things immediately, knowing all too well that it is only nebulous, unpredictable time that has control.

Since you left I have seen two or three clients in the midst of or shortly after losing a mother.  When I do carefully disclose my own loss they inevitably ask how it can be done... how did I survive?  And I always, always want nothing more than to reassure them that time will ease the pain and life will go forward.  Something inevitably grabs at me and demands I offer more truth than that and I inevitably say what I am sure was said to me.

Time makes the day to day living easier but the unexpected waves of grief are just as painful when they do come.  In many ways the grief is stronger because it is complicated by expectations that this should be easier now, that time should have healed this wound instead of leaving a bandaged sore that weeps in quiet moments.  Life moves forward and beauty does not cease to exist but it is forever changed.

Juliette breaths rhythmically in her sleep on my chest and I am amazed by the unending circle that is this existence.  I know that you held me like this too and prayed that I would never feel the pain and the grief that you felt at times, all the while knowing that it is inevitable.  We know great love because it gives and honors both joy and sorrow.  Without one we would not have the other.

Juliette Marian Fellows

On February 18th Juliette Marian Fellows came into this world after a precarious eight months, weighing 2 lbs. 2 ozs.  She is a fiercely strong little girl with the sweetest of temperaments and is already a lover of the outdoors and snuggling, just like her grandmother.

Happy Birthday, Mom

This will be the fourth year we blow out the candles on your cake without you and talk about how much we miss you.  The fourth year we shake our heads and say, "how has it been this long?" and "how did this happen?"  

I close my eyes every night and talk to you.  Most of the time I can hear your voice, familiar sayings, your laughter.  And I can always see your face and all of the expressions I somehow memorized through my thirty years with you.  Sometimes... every once in a great while, it's enough. 

I can remember when you were diagnosed with cancer, when we found out just how bad it was; how I could not fathom how something so vibrant, so powerful, so incredibly loving and loved might ever die or just not be one day.  

People tell you so many things when someone you love passes away.  It's hard to believe or even hold onto when all you want is what you've had.  In time, many of these things come true.  I learned how to talk to you without touching you, seeing you, or hearing your voice.  I found joy again in life and discover you often in my dreams and always in my memories.  And now I find you constantly as I prepare to be a mother to my own child. 

I try not to get lost in the overwhelming sadness of not having my own mother to share in all of this joy, this fear, this anticipation... to not wonder or imagine how incredible it would be to tell you how this feels, to ask you what it felt like for you, to hear your worries, your excitement, your own experience.  And I try not to want you, to need you all of the time.  

There are moments in which I take great delight in knowing this little one inside of me already has so much of you and there are times I realize in desperation that he or she will only know you through pictures and stories.  I hope that every year, not just on your birthday, we are able to find you through our memories and stories and to celebrate you in a way that your grand-baby knows just how incredibly fortunate he or she is to have such a legend for a grandmother.  

In many ways, the advice of my friends and family was right... "you will find this love again when you have your own children".  And I will have to walk with them through my memories, through our traditions, trace the lines of your face and the sounds of your laughter as well as I can.  I will sing your lullabies about horses and your silly songs about dogs, tell your jokes about the mailman, and call my children by crazy names only a mother could use with love.  I will show them how to delight in the simplest of things, like the way warm pavement on a summer evening feels on your bare feet, or how being in the presence of the people you love must be taken in like a deep breath in the moment, or how to love with reckless abandon even when you know that nothing lasts forever.  

Happy Birthday, Mom.  

In the Quiet

Nestled between a wreath of branches

Above the bickering play of two boastful reds,

Your silent watch gently finds me.

In a moment there is stillness within

A knowing and familiar center

Your witness is what grounds me. 

Just as thoughts begin to cloud

And distance slips between the tread

Your steady gaze awaits my hopeful turn.  

As it has been through the life between us

Waiting beyond the bustling

You remind me that we are found again within the quiet.

Remembering Mama Marian

...who taught me the fiercest of love and how to find beauty before, during, and after a storm.

This is Not How It Was Supposed to Be

It's been a year and a half since you died and over two years since our world was fractured and shaken to its core.

And there is not a single day that slips away unnoticed or an afternoon that fades into the night without loneliness for what has passed.  

There are words that fit into pieces missing, but never that complete the puzzle.  Phrases and expressions, long sighs, and streaming tears that come when least expected are spread thin along the edges.  Moments stick like worn tape on a weathered door and leave memories that tug at the same places inside. 

We step lightly forward because the world moves beneath us, but I would gladly tread backward if I could.  And the stubborn thoughts persist, despite their naivety.  "This is not how it was supposed to be" echoes like it did on that Saturday in November when the scenery stood rigid, juxtaposed with the shattering and swirling of my world inside.  

I am angry all the time with what was taken from me before I ever really knew that it could even be taken at all.  I am angry at myself for believing that I was ever promised otherwise.  And I am so unbearably heartbroken at the hole that cannot be filled, at the fissure that separates what was and could have been with the hollow shell of what is. 

There have been so many days on which I have sat down to write, to put my memory quilt together, to go through the letters and emails I have untouched in folders and stored away in boxes.  And on each of those days I've stopped before I could even begin.  Because this is not how it was supposed to be.  I keep expecting to be down the road somewhere, in this place I thought I'd be by now; the space where that thought no longer paralyzes everything inside of me.  And so I sit with it still, day in and day out.  I sit with the disbelief that you are gone and the angry reminder that what is left does not ever feel enough.     

At the end of the day I close my eyes and know that what you taught me, above all of this, will sustain me through this and more.  I hold tight to the memories I have of you in hard times, when all I wanted was for you to find your smile again.  And I remember how you told me time and again, "this too shall pass" and that "sometimes in life we just have to be sad for a while"... 

Race for Hope - DC:

Race for Hope - DC: This will be my second year of running the Race for Hope in memory of Mama Marian...

Birthdays

Two years ago on your 57th birthday I sent you our favorite cake in the form of cupcakes, wedged between foil in Tupperware containers.  Dad put a pink candle in one and took a picture of you holding it.  I love that picture, despite how bittersweet it felt even a month later.

It seems funny that I only spent 29 of your 57 birthdays with you.  I always did have a hard time believing you existed before me.  Despite how narcissistic that may sound, I had not seen a single day in this world without you until last September.  It was impossible for me to believe I'd never have another.

And still, it is the thought that crushes me, just as it was the fear of it so soon after that 57 birthday.  When I can stay in the sun of a warm November day or get lost in a memory of you smiling, laughing, and living, I am with you again.  I can celebrate with you again today as we've done for so many years.  And I can feel your excitement and pure joy in knowing that your granddaughter will be a big sister sometime next summer.  Our little family, the one I feared would certainly shatter when you left us, is growing Mom!  You have a son-in-law and he and I have a new niece, born the Friday after our wedding.  And our wedding...  Mom, you were everywhere!

And so I will celebrate your 59th birthday today with you while I bake the white cake with chocolate frosting, sprinkles, and pink candles.  And I will stay with you here in today, just as it is, so I can spend one more November 14th with the person I still cannot imagine living without.

A Sunrise One Year Later

Dad and I took your ashes back to Chincoteague this morning and let the wind carry them off as the sun came up.  We miss you, Mama... and yet we find you everywhere.

A Strong but Gentle Wind

Where the cusp of summer meets the fall
There is a stillness now.
It settles into this fragile branch
and rests beneath its bow.

It was a year ago this breeze swept in
to leave me restless with a knowing,
that much to which I clung so tight,
would vanish with its blowing.

Such a heavy grace that I recall,
its patience strong and steady,
a messenger who sat quite silent,
and waited at the ready.

Amidst the bluster and bluish sky,
it stung my catching breath,
I recognize its gentle hand
that wisely gestured death.

When summer's sky lends to a fold,
And the sun's warm earth begins to chill,
memory balances outside the window,
and sits upon my sill.

Just like clockwork, it sidles up,
with a lonely persistent stare,
and waits for me to realize
that it is still standing there.

A Few of Your Favorite Things

Walking through life without you a phone call, email, or road trip away, I find myself mesmerized by your love of life and your salt of the earth needs and desires. People tend to remember others as saints after they die, and I know just how disgusted you would be if you thought I'd speak of you in such a contrived, superficial manner. You would laugh and say something like, "oh, yes, I am your sainted mother" in the holiest of tones.

That said, the image of you that I carry from a magical, clumsy childhood, as an obnoxious, out of control teenager, and through the eyes of a disillusioned, stumbling adult, is one of warmth and a love that cannot be expressed in words. Your image in my mind and in my soul is one of genuine, complete, and imperfectly perfect humanity. I know what it means to smile on the inside and I feel it every time I see one of your favorite things.

You were thrilled by the color the sky turns and the way the clouds move right before a storm... just as the last of the humid air gets swept away by a changing wind.

Chester, the yellow lab on the corner of East Hill Road and Gracey, always gives Dad the most love and affection, but you were the one who sought him out and called his name on long walks.

You loved our small town and would have lived there happily for a thousand more years... on the top of a mountain where no one delivers pizza and every bicycle ride starts on a terrific slope and ends with a tired push of the handlebars.

When Jeff and I were young you would make us pancakes for dinner when Dad went on business trips and tell us to never let you get too serious, or we'd have to remind you to "live a little".

There was nothing like a nap after work on the worn out couch with a worn out old comforter or our Christmas night campouts under the tree between opened presents and balled up paper and bows.

Even after you fractured your ankle on Jeff's "killer bee" skateboard going down the driveway, you insisted on showing me how you could jump up and click your ankles together twice on that icy walk in the dead of winter... and still laughed about it in the Emergency Room afterward as they taped that same right ankle.

Although the idea of having house guests made your hair stand on end with anxiety, you always said as they were leaving that we should have people over more often.

And the hamsters, rabbits, and pets we begged you for growing up always ended up in your care and somewhere deep in your heart... like the hamster with gangrene that you took to the vet for 48 stitches only to die the next day, or the turtle I caught that you set free after putting me to bed because you couldn't stand to think of it out there in its box all night.

These are the things that I think about and remember most from day to day... the littlest things that made you smile... fresh sheets from the clothesline, swimming out past the waves in the ocean, walking barefoot through the yard and across the broken brick walkway to the front door... washing and waxing your first and only new car (that is now mine) in the driveway, eating the best cheeseburger on the island with me in Chincoteague for days in a row, staying in your PJ's until noon and making us the world's best sourdough pancakes...

Most of all, you loved us. We were your favorite things and you told us and showed us quite often. At the end of the day, when I hear the "All Things Considered" music and smell my own dinner cooking, it is not the memory of the past that resonates as much as it is the awareness of a love so withstanding and so breathtakingly perfect that it will forever be in my present.

The Good Stuff

There's so much of it... so many days and years of memories that I can capture with all of my senses so strongly. I'm afraid to fall asleep sometimes or shift my thoughts, as though I might lose one more piece if I do.

I think to myself constantly that I need to write them down... and then I don't... because every time I have a perfect memory you are here with me, and then I have to lose you all over again. Maybe I can make those moments more lasting if I do put them in writing, though, and that is worth the sadness that finds me wherever I go anyway.

When I close my eyes and think of you, I always picture your hands first. I'm not sure why. You used to tell me that you would look at your mother's hands as she grew older and it took you aback to see them age so much. Maybe I see them because they were the only the things that stopped changing when you got sick. You still held my hand as tight as you ever did and your hands were always beautiful. I'm glad that mine sometimes remind me of yours and even those deep ridges in your fingernails... I used to run my fingertips against each of them. Now I can reach down and feel every groove on my own hands.

And with the change of every season, you are everywhere. When we opened the windows this spring I was hit with the best of deja vu. I can feel myself in that tiny twin bed in my old room at home, lazily sleeping in beneath cool sheets. And you come climb into bed with me, like always. It's ridiculously small for two people and I have to grab you tight to keep from rolling off the edge. You love these mornings and, as much as I hate to wake up, it's always been my favorite way to inch out of dreamland.

Coming home last month made all of this more real. I guess there is some part of me that always thinks I'm coming home to you. And the closer we got to Christmas Tree Hill, the more the lump in my throat throbbed. I can see you running down the front steps in your bare feet to meet me at the car. I can feel you hugging me and telling me at least once every three or four minutes how glad you are to have me home. And I can hear your voice... and how you say my name... "Meg?" "Megan Began..." "Megan Liz!"

You're at the kitchen sink and you're biting your pinkie nail with your wrist twisted backward on the blue chair in the living room. You're up at night reading when I get home from Esther's or Caitlin's and you can't wait to talk... even at 2am. You're yelling from another room for me to help you find your glasses or singing in the kitchen and begging me to come sing with you, even though you knew I'd get so embarrassed to sing aloud.

And you're not sick in my memories... not the good ones.... not the ones I intend to keep forever. You're always bouncing around or snuggling with me. You're smiling and laughing and telling me how proud of me you are, even when I do something stupid. You laugh and tell me how much I remind you of you.

I can see you perfectly, Mama. When I wear the purple shirt I got you for Christmas years ago... the one that says "Not all who wander are lost", I can smell your smell... like the inside of a wooden chest with the permanence of home. When your hands reach out to me, they don't grab me like they did so many times when you were sick and so frightened. They hold me tight and they rest on my cheek lightly on a spring morning. That is how I remember you best... frosting me head to toe in sunblock on the beach in Chincoteague, brushing my hair and telling me how lucky I am to have such "gorgeous hair" until I squirm away and yell at you for brushing my ear. I see your hands rolling the sweet roll dough a few days before Christmas, putting out nectar for the hummingbirds while you balance on one foot over the deck railing, reaching out to slam on the non-existant hand brake on the passenger side when I drive too close to someone. I can hear you calling for "Jeffrey Paul, Boogsie, and Jamesy" from the bottom of the stairs with grocery bags in both arms, so happy to be home from work and with your family. And I can see your fingers wrapped around a wine glass, opening a cupboard or the medicine cabinet, unwrapping a Christmas ornament to put on the tree, and doing that 70's finger thing you do when you like the music... your glasses perched on your nose and your lips tight with a mysterious smile.

You're right here with me tonight and always.

The Quilt of Life... Mama Marian's Square

For the McLean Hospice Interfaith Memorial Service & Reception ("Legacy Quilt")

"Creating the Quilt of Life... A Remembrance of Our Loved Ones... A million fibers connect us..."

I Hate that You're Not Here

I can't stand this anymore. I cried so hard on the way home tonight that my nose bled all over... and then my contact got balled up and lodged in the back of my eye. And the dog's been whining ever since I got home but I can't stop crying. I'm a big mess and nothing makes it any better. You're the one person I want to talk to, to sob all over, to hug me and tell me "this too shall pass". Mom, where are you???? I hate that I'm so alone, that everything feels so small, like it will never be enough, it will never be you. I don't know what to do with myself on these days. I'm trying to keep busy... working, going to the gym, planning this wedding... but the quiet and the emptiness squeeze themselves right on in between. And I remember the realness, the permanence, the absolute heartache of the hole you left behind. I can't believe you're gone. I can't believe I don't have a mom. My days are filled with constant reminders of you and us. I'm trying so hard to remember how lucky I am to have had a mom like you... but it's not enough sometimes and I can't help but fall apart.
You were too big, too important to just disappear. You were too much of my everything to just suddenly not be. I've lived for so long just knowing you'd be there; I never had to wonder what would happen when you wouldn't be anymore. And, even if I had, there was time left... plenty of time... for you to be at my wedding and at the birth of my children, for us to snuggle under the Christmas tree on Christmas night like we've always done, for three hour long phone calls and the annual "girl's weekend" in DC, for life and everything that is left to see and do. I look back on pictures of us just a little over a year ago and am so jealous of those people. I want that life back more than anything I've ever wanted. And the frustration of it all just comes back around when I realize once again that there isn't a thing i can do about it.
I'm going to keep on doing everything I can to heal, to keep on living, just like I promised I would. But this is really hard, Mom and I miss you with every part of myself.

One of Those Things

I have something to tell you... all the time. I know this is going to crack you up and we will laugh about it for years to come... Only YOU would appreciate this... So, remember that time?

Quite honestly, this happens at least 30 times a day. I go to talk to you, to call you, to email you. I push aside little thoughts and observations to tell you later. I know exactly how you'll respond, what you will say... how you will feel.

And then there comes that hollow again. It's like an echo in an empty house, a drop-in-the-bucket kind of sensation that feels just as unreal as it did five months ago.

Those moments are the absolute worst of it, Mom. They don't always last long but they are always the same size. They hit with the same force. And suddenly what all of those people kept saying makes sense... It doesn't get easier it just gets different.

I'm amazed by how much I hurt. And the irony in what I want most makes the hurt like a cut that won't heal, because it's you I need to tell and it's you I want to know.

You would be so sad for me, Mom. You would hurt for me just as you have always done. And we would slowly start to hurt less as we carried the pain together. For some reason, it's always been easier to let go when I see you try to carry the weight... Only then do I understand that it cannot be carried by either of us and so we must put it down together.

Mom, I'm not quite sure what I'm doing a lot of the time. I'm still doing it, though, just like I know you would want. Sometimes I think about those old women who never learn to drive or balance a checkbook until they are left stranded when their husbands die. I always thought to myself that I'd learn to do everything I could along the way so that would never happen to me. And then I lost my best friend. Suddenly learning to balance a checkbook at the age of 85 doesn't seem half-bad.

Some days I'm like a fish on a bicycle. And I have to remind myself that a whole is more the sum of all of its parts. I can be whole no matter where you are.