As I reflect on yet another roller coaster of a day, I have to say I miss when times were simpler. When I was 22 and my sister was 12, yet I wanted her on my team whenever we played a board game with pop culture trivia. Can’t quite even remember now without the help of google what the games were even called, but they had a DVD that went along with them, there were pizza rolls in the oven and I was drinking with my family on a Friday night. At one point I had Saturday’s off and if any of my friends called on a weekend morning, my dad would tell them “breezy’s still snoozin” and somehow mix up one of my friends names with a child from his own past. My mom would be the life of the party, and my brother would be coming home well after the games were put away and I would listen to him tell his tales of the night to my mom, his fellow night owl and partner in story-time crime. Times like these were the cornerstone of my growing up, and my favorite memories to look back on. They sneak up welcomed and unexpectedly on nights like tonight. My family truly is the makeup of who I am. In hard times and when it’s easy, they’re always there somehow. 
Please say a prayer for the most important woman I know. She needs some extra love and strength and some really good vibes 🙏🏼

life begins to make more sense when you take the picture that was perfectly painted for you and rip it to shreds. only then do you have the freedom to place the pieces the way you choose and not the way they were chosen for you. this is what it’s really supposed to feel like. the biggest part of putting this picture together is not only is it yours to look at every day and live with every year and sleep with every night, but you come to realize it’s not how you fit into this picture, but how this picture fits around you. people places and things in this picture will change, some will weather the storms, some will leave when it’s sunny and come in when it’s pouring. pay attention to both. very few things will stay the same, while the things that don’t change gain more momentum and take up a real presence in your world. a little effort goes a long way and perception is reality. match my effort and appreciate my reality. respect my picture whether it looks like yours or not. 👑

Today it’s all a mess. My heart, my head, my house, my car. Today I feel like a depressed young mom who is holding a thousand different ends trying to find a way to make them all meet some way somehow. My heart feels heavy and broken up. The kind of broken where it’s hard to inhale a full breath and then the crying comes out easily and it almost is sad to me that I’m crying. I feel bad for me. Tomorrow is my mother’s birthday. She would have been 58 years old. Fifty. Eight. And today I can’t keep it together to save my life. I feel like the weight of the world is once again cemented on top of my shoulders and my body is underground. My head is just above the pavement and my neck is heavy with a pit of constant grief about to erupt into a fit of screaming cries. Some days I feel like I may actually have it together and then days like today come in like a goddamn freight train and I feel like I’m failing in every area of my life. Truth is, I really liked who I was before my mom died. I never wanted her to die. I never wanted this new set of issues and mental sadness and heart heaviness becoming a part of my every day reality. I feel like I haven’t been my greatest self in almost 9 months. I lost a baby in the last 12 months and then 3 short months later I lost my mom. I never had a chance to even come up for air before then my grandmother died and somehow, I still put two feet in front of the other most days, brush my teeth and go to work. Or be a mom. Or be a wife. Or how my role of sister and daughter was kind of starting to take a back seat as I came into my own as a mom and wife to my own new little family, suddenly reappeared and needed me, front and center, immediately. I always try to make people feel important or special. I’m always trying to make the best of a bad situation and almost always I can find my light at the end of any tunnel. And I know eventually I’ll be ok. And the only reason I’m sure of that is because I’m Rita’s daughter. The days I feel guilty for crying in front of Mav, I hurry upstairs and start to organize or clean in a mad dash to protect him from my sadness. I’m a firm believer in teaching that emotions are good ways to feel and express, but I’m kind of sick of explaining to him why I’m sad…. because he’s a BABY, and these are earth shattering tears that I’m crying when they come and I just don’t wanna put that on him. I don’t wanna put that on anyone. The aftershock of my mother being gone is exactly that. I feel it, I feel it like tremors under my feet and jolting up through my bones, into my heart like an arrow then slowly moving through my throat like hot suffocating tar, and finally up to my brain to somehow make sense of all these nasty unwelcome feelings. Which I never can. I still shake my head in disbelief every time I see a framed picture of her, or her funeral card on my visor in my car, or her urn on my front entry table. I feel it when I look in the mirror and there are sad circles under my eyes, and new gray hairs along my hairline, and a few lines in between my eyebrows I never noticed before. I feel it when my husband looks at me like I’m actually on the brink of being checked into 4 winds. I feel it sitting heavy in my heart at night when I say goodnight to a picture frame that holds my beloved mother’s picture in it. I feel it when I’m losing patience. I feel it when I wanna call my mom. I feel it when I say dead or die or death or gone or anything pertaining to the end of my mother’s existence. It doesn’t help I’m almost 7 months pregnant and my hormones make me acutely aware of how much I feel and somedays when I can’t explain how I feel I best explain it as feeling ….nothing. Or numb, I guess. And that’s concerning to me because it’s a scary way to feel. Some days it’s hard to make a decision. Sometimes it’s hard to explain that there’s a fire and a flood inside my brain. A messy jumbled up scary shitstorm of emotions that almost nobody understands. Almost nobody understands me. Some days it’s hard to describe what actual heartache feels like, but trust me, you can feel a broken heart just like a broken bone or a bad wound. It reminds you it’s there. Throbbing and hollow and hot and heavy. 

So today is the day before my mama’s birthday. And I’m hurting. And I just want to feel like I have a reason to be happy. And I know I do and how extraordinarily blessed I am for everything I do have. But I really did like who I used to be. And I hope somehow tomorrow is easier than today. Today is the build up of a day I see coming. My little sister and my dad are going to be up in the clouds flying to a place where they have wonderful memories with my mama. They’ll bring some of her her ashes and they’ll lay them to rest forever in one of her favorite places. As beautiful as that sounds I wish she was on that plane instead. It was this exact day last year they decided to cancel their trip to St. Kitt’s because she was ….off; and it was then, that we know now was the beginning of the end.
I’ll do many things tomorrow as I do every day to honor my mom. It feels weird to not be buying her a present every day for the last month to spoil her on her birthday. I wonder how I’ll feel tomorrow when I can’t even call my mom on her birthday. I’ll still sing to her and celebrate her and I’ll even make her favorite birthday dessert and eat every last bite of it. I’ll let Mav blow out her candles and he’ll sing with me. We’ll smile and maybe even laugh tomorrow but today it’s not that light. It’s not that easy. If you feel so inclined to help me celebrate my mom tomorrow, then say it to her, out loud. That you’re thinking of her and wishing her a happy birthday. If you can drink, have a captain and coke with your husband. Or your girlfriends. Buy a designer bag you’ve been loving and couldn’t find a reason (until now :))to splurge on yourself. Listen to one of her favorite songs. Go to the karaoke bar and sing for her. Eat the damn cake. And then eat another piece with extra whipped cream. Say her name. Light a candle for her. Put your slippers on and sit and laugh with your family. Watch law and order or honey boo boo, because that’s what she would be doing. Then at 10pm when your grown children are coming in for the night, go to the racino and spend every last dollar in your wallet on roulette and then text your family at 3am to tell them you just hit the jackpot. 

My mom, she lived. My God did that woman have a life and she lived the shit out of it. She lived it out loud, every day, until she took her last breath. Happy Birthday Eve in heaven my mama. I love you. I love you. I love you. And I fucking hate that you’re not here. 

Today is my grandpa’s birthday. I would tell you how old he would have been, but quite honestly I don’t remember. I’ve lost count. I know it’s the 15th birthday since he’s been gone but I’m not positive how old he was when he passed so, that’s that. Normally I would call my mom and ask her, so then I could write a sappy status about how he taught me how to eat tomatoes right off the vine out of his garden just beyond the patio in the backyard of Fairmont Terrace in West Orange New Jersey. And then I would go and pick up a tea from Dunkin and a bouquet of wild flowers for my mom since this day was always hard for her, but I can’t. And he’s laid to rest in NJ so there’s no visiting him and bringing him the flowers. So I’ll write instead. Today is heavier than usual. I’m missing my mom, a lot. I would do just about anything to be able to hear advice from her today. To ask her all the questions I haven’t been able to since last summer. To ask her if I’m on the right path. What does that even mean anyway? The right path? I feel like at any given time I’m on 22 different paths and I guess that’s the glory of being a woman and able to multi task, but I just want her blessing in my life. I know I’m a great mom and I know she is so proud of the mother I’m becoming every day, and the sweet, sassy little boy I’m raising with a killer sense of humor. I know she thinks I’m talented and have great success inside my love for doing hair; I was, after all, raised in a hair salon, so I know she’s happy with that choice. I know she applauds my efforts in trying to cook as wonderfully as she did, and smirks when she sees me trying daily to keep my husband happy. And when I clean I can almost hear her in my head saying “you’re such a half ass!” Because I hate cleaning and she knows I’m always shortcutting that shit… But all the other gray areas. Am I living and operating at my fullest potential? Am I really always following my heart? Should I put the Cadbury mini eggs down for God’s sake? She would definitely tell me “I thought you gave those up for lent?” And ya know what – I haven’t given anything up for lent. Because I’m still a little mad that I had to give up my mom. And vodka. Not that the two go hand in hand, even though they actually sort of do 🙂 but I’m pregnant and you catch my drift. Plus, Rita loved her some captain, or admiral nelson over vodka for that matter (insert dry heave noise here). So it just doesn’t seem fair this year. 
Ugh. I just miss her. And I’ve been on the verge of tears since I woke up because I just wanna hear her. Say something, anything, yell at me even!! Please. And tell me to come to her house and she’ll make my favorite dinner and give me an early birthday pressie. And that I’m the only one who can figure out if I’m in fact living up to be my greatest self. And she’d probably tell me to leave Mav with her, and go to Marshall’s and get a pedicure. Then she’d fill Mav with salami, pasta and lollipops (“they’re organic Bree! I ordered them on Amazon!”) and when I would come back Mav would be asleep and there would be rigatoni and sauce and the most delicious meat balls waiting on the stove for me. And even if none of my questions were answered, I felt better, and like the weight has been lifted, and like I was loved.
I still miss her love every day. That might be one of the more difficult things to explain. Imagine your mother. Imagine how much she loves you. Now, if you’re blessed enough to be a mother, think of how much you love your child. Your children. Now imagine the love of your mother with your own love as a mother in your mind. And imagine that love just ….gone. Wiped from all existence. I know she’s not “gone” spiritually, this I’m sure of. But the absence of feeling someone who loves me like my mother loves me is some days too much to bear. It wasn’t a break up that left me with many feelings and a lost love. It wasn’t someone whose heart I broke and had to deal with the repercussions. It is the constant burn of missing someone loving you. It’s the ache of wanting to start shopping for her birthday and doing something nice for the woman who gave me life. The woman I was lucky enough to call mom who was always celebrating my milestones as some of her favorite days on earth. Filling my special days with her love. Filling my worst days with her certain type of love. Always looking for a way to make me feel spoiled. And l o v e d. There is nothing like a mother’s love, I promise you. So if you’re lucky enough to still have a queen walking the earth and she happens to be your mom, go give her a hug. Take her out for a pedicure this week. Buy her some pretty flowers. Because she needs it. She needs you, and you sure as shit need her 👑👑👑👑👑