I can go days without mistakenly thinking I should pick up the phone and check on her.
My conversations with Dad have a much different focus and much less intensity.
But every time Jack does something cute or wonderful or amazing or confusing, the emptiness rises up. I want to tell her about Jack. I want to marvel at him with her because her greatest gift and passion and fascination was with children. At it is in those moments that the absence, the incompleteness waves frantically at me: "She's not here, she's not here, she's not here."
I can't call her and say: "Jack can count to ten now, but he forgets 4 until the end, so he adds it on after ten. Did I do that? Do you remember when I learned to count."
I can't send her a video of him lining up his countless cars, end to end, perfectly aligned, with an engineer's precision, and not stopping to all is ordered and right in his universe. I don't have to ask her whether I did that as I am constitutionally certain that kind of order has never been important to me.
I can't wrap her up in my arms, kiss her soft cheek, hold her and hear her laugh and feel her strength and sweetness as she hugs me back.
I know I am supposed to focus on moving on, learned lessons and living each day in the present, yadiyadiyah.
Frankly, I am just not always able to do that. In fact, if she were here, she would be telling me just that: get on with life, take care of that baby, get to work. But sadly, she's not.
So Mom, I still miss you. I still think about you and am deeply sad that Jack will never know you the way that I did. He does say good night to you every night on our way upstairs to bed. We stop at your picture, he touches your cheek and says "g'night gramma." And I tell him every night that just after he falls asleep, you come down from heaven and kiss him on the cheek.
So I guess in that way he will know you.
Love Mark
I (Aunt Jenny) found the following in a book Aunt Cathy gave me for my birthday this year, "Chicken Soup for the grieving soul". I opened the book randomly and read the following:
ReplyDelete"Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy." Inspired by an Eskimo Legend
It made me feel better. I read a little more and it talked about a girl named Jenny. Wow, Mom is making sure we are moving along here...
I have not wanted to read this book, guessing it is part of my denial phase but a friend of mine was struggling with the upcoming anniversary of his son's death, a year before, on March 6. I wanted to comfort him, but also in the back of my mind, counting the days until March 10.
You are right, she would totally tell you to: 'get on with life, take care of that baby, get to work.'
I thought about the beautiful poem T wrote about Mom's hands. How so like my hands are like Mom's. These hands, wiping the tears away that I have not let fall, until just now. Thank you Mark, I needed that.
I hope that Jackson will think of her love every time he sees a star in the sky; every time you sing him 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star; makes a wish on a star...that you will feel just how happy she is watching and loving him and kissing him, not just when he is asleep but whenever she wants...and will be there for him and for all of us whenever we need her and she needs us.
P.S. I think I finally figured out where 'that mother's intuition' comes from.