Happy Birthday, Mom!
Jim made a comment after we finished the celebration that if someone had told him five years ago that this was how we would celebrate Mom's birthday, he wouldn't know how to respond. I get that. Here we are with our two beautiful children celebrating a beautiful woman, but she is not physically here with us. I miss her.
I want to write about Mom, but a large part of me wants to keep my memories, thoughts and feelings to myself. Like any mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship, ours had it's rocky moments and only in becoming a mother myself was I able to understand the reasons we had our struggles.
I want to thank her for raising my husband to be the man he is today. I want to apologize to her for being such a self-centered brat when we were planning the wedding. I want to have coffee with her and talk about raising boys. I want to go shopping together for house decor and clothes for the kids. I want to cook Sunday dinner with her. I want to cry with her on the days I feel that I just can't do this. I want to argue with her about spoiling the kids. I want to look through baby pictures with her and hear stories about how my husband and his brother were like Ben and Lucas. I want to tell her how much she inspired me to be the mother I strive to be.
So many "wants", but they simply cannot happen- not in the way I need them. I talk to her during late night nursing sessions and car rides or walks with children. I can imagine our conversation and I can hear her voice in my head, but she's not there. And sometimes it just hurts- All the beauty in the life Jim and I have built together and we cannot share it with his parents in a typical way. However, it is beautiful that we have found ways to honor and include mom and dad in our family so that our children know them.
I don't know how to end this post. I can't seem to express what I am feeling right now, which is a profound sense of sadness in the fact that she is gone. Time doesn't make loss easier, just different. And tonight, singing "Happy Birthday" with her son and two grandsons hurt my heart, because she should be here.
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