March 20, 2014

Dear Mom,

I miss you everyday.  Several times a day.  The pain of your loss is still so raw in so many ways.  Everything has changed and nothing has changed.  That is a hard place to be stuck in the middle of.  The light is hard to find and yet I keep seeking it.

You were so many people to me in so many ways.  Mother, confidant, friend, advisor, sounding board.  And I miss every part of my relationship with you.  It is hard to talk to other people about how profoundly sad I am.  My husband does not understand.  My sisters understand, but have their own sadness to deal with.  I do not think Dad is capable of understanding right now -- he has his own acute grief and his own way of dealing with the pain.  I feel like he is building a wall, or maybe there was always a wall and you just always buffered that and acted as a path through that wall.  I am having a hard time finding that path.  I feel like an orphan in many ways, which I know is in no way unique, but is so foreign to the familial closeness you facilitated when you were alive and that frankly was my normal.

I am trying not to be sad, but instead be grateful for all that you were, that I was blessed with so much love, and that we had a good relationship for most of the forty years we shared.  But it is hard, and I am stumbling.  Some days are worse than others, but everyday has its hurdles.

It is hard for me to fathom what death means.  I have done a lot of reading into the science of the soul, and the theory that energy does not disappear, and that somehow, somewhere your soul still exists.  If that is true, I sure hope that where your soul is now is not lonely and that you are with other souls that make you happy.  I hope that death is only hard on those you leave behind and that death is actually a blessing for you.  Although it is so painful not to have you here anymore, thank you so much for how much you loved when you were here.  Thank you for loving me.

Thinking of you.