December 1

People tend to use traumatic events to pinpoint change in their lives. 9/11 is one that we can all remember life before and life after… events that change us from who we were to whom we are following it.

December 1. Eighteen years ago today I sat next to my mom and did homework on a little couch that was next to her bed. My grandmother needed some alone time so I was ‘on watch’. I knew she was in Hospice care, but my mind protected me from that fact and I figured it was just ANOTHER ‘episode’ and this too would be overcome. My mother began to make interesting comments in those days that I would learn to be her ‘last’ days. She talked about angels that look like everyday people that walk among us. We never know who they are; we need to just know that they are there. It would be two days before she died. I didn’t go visit her the next day……………

My life has become divided into before December 3, 1993 and after. As if my life experiences are remembered based on whether it was when she was still here or after the fact. The date becomes a moment in time that STOPPED…. Whenever someone talks about the beginning of December I immediately think, “I wonder if they are talking about before or after THE DATE”. That is when I became a motherless daughter. I read the book, Motherless Daughters, following THE DATE. I particularly remember a letter from one woman that lost her mother ten years earlier and still grieved as if it was the day before. I thought to myself in my very newly found grief that surely that woman was crazy to be distraught and saddened TEN YEARS LATER! I come to find out that it isn’t about the years. It isn’t about another year without my mom. It’s about the love that was and always will be there. That hole in your heart that can’t be replaced.

My mom continues to teach me so many things even though I can’t see her. I definitely can feel her. When her song comes on the radio I know it was there for a reason. When I see her smile in my daughter’s own face. That’s the thing; it never goes away, even if a person does. My mother is the background music in my life. I may be busy living and struggling, or laughing and loving, but when the crazy world stops………you can hear it……you can feel it……….she’s there.

I had a dream that I don’t think was a dream. It was my house. It was unchanged. She was there. In her wheelchair. I went to hug her, expecting to be unable to embrace her because, come on, everyone knows ghosts are see-through. Duh. I hugged and I felt her. I felt her warmth, touched her hands, and felt love in return. Allison Dubois said, “Lately when I do readings the deceased say, ‘Even though you don't see making memories with me anymore, I'm still making them with you. When you die you'll flash back to all you did after I died and see me there laughing with you as I really was. On birthdays, at dinner tables, in the delivery room for family, I WAS there." This is what I felt that night and the dream that I hold onto in belief.

I know my mother is near me. She sends me signals to let me know she’s there. Recently it has been the alarm clock playing the most beautiful music, softly, in the wee hours of the morning. I’ve come to realize that an angel is walking among us; it’s just that we don’t realize that this particular one is my mother. Thanks for watching over me and continue to make these memories with me, Mom. Love you!