Dan drove by my childhood home last night. As soon as we turned down the familiar streets leading up to the road that raised me, I instantly started to sob. A reaction I haven’t felt in quite awhile. “You’re really gonna drive past my mom’s house aren’t you?” • Yep! He said. He held me in our front hallway hours before and let me cry into his chest. He knew what he was doing.

She didn’t have a final resting place. We were too shocked and too hurt to think about all of that, I think. I don’t know how I feel about not being able to go and visit her at a headstone. But I felt the overwhelming weight of her absence, mixed with ability to have the space to cry over her again. While parked out front of the house she made a sacred space for me for so many years, I let the tears roll, and listened to my kids talk all about her from the backseats. They know her so well.

It’s overgrown, and unkempt, but there’s still little things about it that breathed into me. The brick everyone thought my mom was crazy for painting purple. My favorite tree that blossomed my favorite color – fuscia – every spring is still there, just bigger now. So tall it almost pointed like an arrow directly to the room I used to get to fill with my girlfriends every Friday and Saturday night. The room with the bed I sat on and broke up with my first boyfriend, she sat next to me crying too. The room I got ready for prom, and my 21st birthday in. The room we’d lay on the floor of, and read the inside of every new CD booklet, and learn every word. The room I packed up when I was 27 while I was mad at her, and moved out. The room that smelled like cool noxema after a hot summer night. She used to put it on my sunburn. She always had extra toothbrushes for my friends, and there was always fresh bagels in the morning with free entertainment inside her commentary about our behavior the night before. Her breath always smelled like coffee or mints, and her hair like a fresh cigarette or Dolce and Gabana’s light blue. There was no in between, and I loved it. I loved her. So much. And I love her still. 

This time of year is like a heavy punch to the heart. Hot tears that hurt to cry. Grief wrinkles I notice a little more, that I acquired from crying on a daily basis all those years ago. A reminder of empty cards, bought, but never filled out by her. Of hospital visits. Of scary conversations. Of hard hope. It’s bittersweet. I’m so thankful to have been able to steep in my own feelings. I remember my first therapy visit being told when I’m in my cave of emotions, it’s ok to not come out. Yesterday felt like the first year of missing her all over again. And I had no idea that was coming. That’s the tricky part. I know she’d want me to be happy, which Dan tried to remind me; but I think she’d want me to feel sad too. Because she was life personified. She was the most special person. She was the garden I walked through in hard times and happy ones. She was my rock, my stepping stone, and then God turned her into a rolling stone. So I sat. In my cave. A few times. Somehow her love still finds its way to me, and for that I’m anchored in gratitude, while her love ripples through my soul. 

Grief is an unpredictable tide. One that rises fast and consumes you. One that dissolves reason and remedy. And then it washes out into the ocean of healing, and before you know it, one foot goes in front of the other, and you’re okay again. 

To my mom, on Mother’s Day. I still needed you.

T h a n k  y o u.

I love you, forever; through all of Heaven and earth. I wish we were planning our outfits for a Saratoga brunch. Telling eachother how excited we are about the pressies we got one another. And I always wonder how you would cope with having to get used to being interrupted 178 times during one story by your grandbabies. Gaga. Glammy. Mama. You are so missed and loved by us 🩷