7

It's been 7 years today since my Mom went to her heavenly home.
When it happened... the tragic end of a tragic story... I wondered if life would ever be normal again. For months afterward the wound was still raw and deep rendering me unfit to be alone for even short periods of time.

I think about Corey's completely valid and yet slightly ridiculous concern for me venturing out alone for a quick trip to the grocery store. I couldn't make it the whole five minutes there without becoming a messy puddle of grief.

Today it is much easier.
There are moments, certainly, where it strikes me again.
I don't think that feeling will ever completely leave, and oddly... I don't really want it to.
It is reassuring and therapeutic to have times of loving her that deeply and missing her that much.
But I am grateful that I have moved beyond feeling it every second of every day. That kind of pain isn't reassuring or therapeutic in the least.

(Tulips from Cindy who always remembers)

Earlier this year I went through a rough phase in my parenting.
I reached out to many for book recommendations and ideas before I remembered that my mom had actually given me a parenting book.

I remember her excitedly telling me how wonderful it was and how it had truly been a guide she clung to as she raised me and my brother. The fact that she had produced Calvin ought to have been motivation enough for me to read it years ago and but for some reason I never did.

The first day I cracked it open a slip of paper fell out. "Give this book to Ash & Corey."
Nothing more than a simple note-to-self message, but seeing her handwriting and remembering how anxiously she had wanted to pass along her precious gift to us meant so much.

There are so many things my teenage self never thought to ask her... The kind of things you never think about until they are happening to you and you want desperately to know what your mom did and be reassured.

I won't have the chance to ask her those questions in this life, but I have this... this treasured book that she loved and used and lived! I called my Grandma Carmen after I found the note and she affectionately told me how my mom referred to it as "The Blue Bible." They had shared many, many conversations about what my mom read and re-read from it's pages.

I have loved reading it. I have seen my mom in it. I have remembered things that she said, and many ways which she influenced and loved and taught me. She was an incredibly conscious, deliberate and effective parent. I wish that I would have recognized it more when I was younger. Because of circumstances that happened later, many of which were not her fault, I didn't see it. And I didn't thank her or honor her enough.

I'm going to finish the book.
And then I'm going to start it again.
And I'm going to hope that I can be the warm, encouraging, protective and intelligent mother to my boys that my mother was to me.