I was driving to Salt Lake Friday night for a friend's birthday party and stopped at my dad's house on the way to get a little help on my taxes. I left his place thinking about how different our lives are now that everyone's out of the house and Mom's gone. I used to think about her a lot every Sunday when I was in church, but lately with vacations and weekend trips and moving and lots of things changing, it's been a good long while since I've had the time to reconnect with her at our usual meeting place of Sundays at 2.
I remember talking to one of Mom's old friends, Jeri Norton, soon after Mom passed away. Jeri lost her mom at a fairly young age as well, so she at least kind of knew what we were going through. She said, "It'll get easier, and then some times, out of the blue, you'll go to call her and forget she's gone. You'll want to ask her for a recipe and then remember she's not there. You'll cry for a bit, but then you remember that she's happy, and that you're happy for her." She was right. It has gotten easier, and it hasn't happened for a while, but as I left my dad's house I started listening to Rascal Flatts' 'Skin' and just remembered her fire and wit, despite surgery and scalpel.
It hurts, of course it does, remembering the last few days. I was only home for 2 days from an international research position before she left us, but seeing the pain she was in and the subsequent pain it was causing me, how could I wish for it to last longer? But good hell, who even knows if it was pain?! It spread down her central nervous system, so how do we know that what she was feeling was worse than what my heart felt?? How could I not want her to stay longer? This is where defense mechanisms kick in and I pretend to forget.
forget.
Forget that part and remember the rest. Sometimes it's good, forgetting. Forget that, though, I'll take any memory of her I can find..
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