Angel Day

You'd think, since Angel Day comes up every single December 13, I'd have something prepared and ready to say about it. But I don't. Well, here goes nothing. I guess I'll share a few things as my family celebrated the life of my mom today.


1. This is the year that it stopped feeling really personal to me that my mom died. It stopped feeling like the universe had personally done me a great injustice, like it was targeting me and me alone. Instead, it started to feel like just one hard thing in my life. Everyone has hard things they have to deal with, and this is one of mine. I guess it finally clicked that I'm one of trillions of human beings who have marched on without a parent, and not the only one who knows the pain of losing their mother too young.


2. Sometimes I have dreams that I get my mom back for one afternoon. We always do something casual together in my dreams - make cupcakes for my friend's bridal shower or go out to lunch. I always wake up from those dreams crying. If there was somehow a real "Go To Lunch Free" card with my mom, I would have definitely cashed it in this year. I would have cashed it in right after my baby was born. I wanted her to be there for the sweet times with a brand new baby. I would love to have a picture of the two of them together, would love to see the way my mom interacted with Claire. She was so wonderful with babies.

I also desperately needed her help this year to figure out how to be a mom. During those long nights right after Claire was born, when I was all by myself trying to figure out breastfeeding, which everyone said would be so easy and natural, and was so insurmountably difficult for me, I would have given anything to have my mom here. People just need their mothers.


3. Life comes and goes and comes again. People die, and we have to be apart from them for a little while. That's part of life. New people are born or come into your life, and those people fill up parts of your heart that you didn't even know were empty.

And when I look at my sweet baby, I think of my mom. I think of the fact that they share the same birthday, and their shared birthday feels like one of the sweetest gifts I could have ever received. And I realize my baby is young, and her eye color could still change, but from all the hazel, green and brown eyes in our family, my baby girl came out with the most gorgeous deep blue eyes that are just one tiny shade off from my mom's eyes. And it feels like I have come full circle, and it feels complete.

So here's to my angel mother. My amazing mom who read Charles Dickens, ate hot tamales, played April Fools jokes, and made us all bounce around in that big brown van of hers because she believed that life is too short to slow down for speed bumps. I love you, mom. Thank you for your incredible legacy.