Mother's Day Come and Gone

I have been trying for several weeks to remember the password I used to access this blog. I have been wanting to write and had no way to do so. But finally today in a quiet moment it came to me. So here I am back again.

It is just over three months since our mom died. Almost daily, I think of things I would like to tell her, or things that I want to ask. I am able to share with other friends who now are facing the passing of their own parents. There are at least two students I see weekly who lost mothers this year, for whom I feel an extra measure of patience.

Mother's Day was tough. I kept getting reminders from Proflowers to send Mom something. She loved flowers and nothing brightened her day like a couple dozen roses. (Now I remember the little vase of yellow flowers I had sent just as she returned from the hospital this last time. They ended up on Lynn's kitchen table because Mom wanted them gone, saying that they were dead and smelled bad. Really though, they lasted at least the whole week that we were there....)But not sending flowers, and no phone call to make. I am not a mom, so the day passed with little fanfare. Watched a Dodger game on TV. Every time Mothers' Day ads came on TV in the week before, Jon muted them or switched the channel so I wouldn't have to keep hearing about it.

Sometime in the first weeks of March, I was cleaning messages off the answering machine, and one of them was from Mom, asking me to call her sisters to tell them what was going on with her. It was a shock to hear her voice. I have left it there for the moment. Not ready to erase the last sound of her voice I have.

Since February, I have participated in several concerts with my students, had a very romantic and memorable second anniversary, complete with car service horror story, put a new roof on the house (thanks to Mom) started a guitar class at one school, started taking Yoga again, created a hummingbird haven here in our yard, and done innumerable things that Mom would like to hear about. So many times she would call to find out how some show, recital or concert had gone, loved to hear about school activities (how she would have loved the cards from Mrs. York's class!). I know my sisters are having the same experience of wanting to tell Mom about things that interested her. She would be really interested to know about her daughter and granddaughter's trip to see us and other relatives in April. She would love to hear about her granddaughter's new condo and that her other granddaughter decided not to get married right now after all, and her third granddaughter has just broken up with her first boyfriend. She would also like to hear that her own sister who had been living with her son and daughter-in-law had moved into an assisted living facility.

Life goes on. It seems trite to say it. Each day that goes by we are farther downstream from where we left Mom sleeping on the riverbank. She doesn't get to see the next bit of scenery. At some point in the distant future, I too will step out onto the bank, and the river will pass me by.

Ocassionally I still cry.