I just have to say. Entering another month without my mother earth side is killing me. It’s just plain difficult. Yesterday I received some pretty terrible news about another precious life taken entirely, and way. too. soon. I felt like I had no air to speak with when I found out. How could anything else tragic possibly even happen after the greatest loss I’ve ever known is still fresh in my bones? 
I’m no guru, and I am no expert at anything, really (except maybe drinking things out of a straw, yeah I’ve definitely mastered that and how to make laundry smell like mildew in the summer, I’m doing that really well) but seriously. I have to send a message out to everyone. Especially in the world I live in today, the world we all live in. 
I watched my poor mother take her very last breaths. I watched her and I don’t know if I will ever write about how awful it all was because it’s far too painful to rethink or replay. So take it from me only because I saw the most fragile and precious thing we have in this life, end. I watched a life leave. I watched my mother die. It makes me sick to admit that and I hate the feelings the word “die” does to my insides only because I have such a real and raw connection to the word now. 
So when I say the only things you get to take with you when you go, are the memories that fill your brain, the moments that make your heart pump faster, the times that can manage to bring tears to your eyes at any point in time. The way you treated others. The way you love, the way you may have hated. The things you remember, the stories your loved ones share with you one last time. That’s it, it’s ALL you have.
The one and only blessing in this terrible situation, was being Rita’s daughter. There was not many people that asked me to leave the room when they said their special goodbye to my mother. Actually, no one asked me to leave. I heard the most sincerest of words. I cried alongside the saddest faces I’ve ever seen. I heard stories about my beautiful mother I never knew. How special is that? To connect with so many of my mom’s most precious relationships and witness the friendships she cherished in the very bitter end?
My mother had a magical life. Although I’m still downright pissed off about the way it all happened and how she was plucked from this life all too soon, I take peace inside my heart that while she was here, she walked on a gorgeous path, alongside a wonderful man, and they pushed limits and loved fiercely and brought three lives into this world together. She and my dad gave us a beautiful and wholesome childhood, taught us about how important family is, and how stupid grudges were. She was a force on earth, and as I start to feel her around me, I realize how powerful and how fiercely she loves me from beyond. 
My mother had everything a girl could want while she was here on earth. To date, she has 5 closets and 7 dressers full of stuff. She wanted for nothing, and if she ever did, my father would spoil her and she would get it. She was outspoken, hilarious and always a step ahead of you. She laid in a bed, unable to speak with her family, for over a week. She was wearing a hospital gown and special hospital socks. Her eyes were so sad, her skin looked so young. I realize now that the woman who had everything, left this world with nothing but her most favorite people by her side. Holding her hands, her feet, her face, anything we could touch. We sang her favorite songs and talked as normally as we could around her. Until the very hollowing end. The end that gutted us, and ripped our hearts out. All she had was the people she taught how to love. The people she spent a lifetime loving. The people who so fiercely and loyally loved her back. 
So I say this. Please, go out and live like you are dying. Because you are. We all are. And I’m not being morbid or depressing, I’m being real. Love the people who you love. The people you don’t like or don’t love don’t ever need to know, so give them that too. Be kind. Be understanding. I wear a smile a lot, when inside I feel like my heart is breaking off into raindrops, never to return, taken away by a storm of sadness. But I smile because I was loved by the greatest woman to ever walk God’s green earth. I smile because I belong to a rare and special family. I find happiness in my brother and sister, and that I still have her other half who loves me more than I think he even knew before all this. (Daddy, I never loved you more. And I am so proud of you.) I smile because I have a son and a husband, a life I am so proud of. And the best things my mother couldn’t take with her, they’re left here in her wake, in her honor. Those things live inside of us. The morals, the respect, the wit, the humor, the mannerisms, the LOVE. And because she loved us, we try to go on in a way that will make her smile when she checks in on us from up above. 
LIVE your life today and every day, and be sure to spread a little more warmth, even when the sun is shining. Because sometimes that’s when people need it most ☀️