the sanctity of the midnight shift

It's 2:45am, and one of the twins is crying. I know without looking it's Lincoln, although admittedly it took me about a week to tell their cries apart. I scoop him out of the crib, and then scoop up Addison with my other arm (picking up two infants at the same time is another skill it took me about a week to figure out).

The usual routine ensues: I head to the living room, switch on the small light in the corner, set the babies in the twin feeding pillow, and pull out the bottles. Tonight (or rather, this morning) I find Sam has marked Addie's bottle with a dry erase marker, so I know it's her turn for the pumped breastmilk and Link's turn for the formula.

I feed the babies for a few minutes, burp one baby, burp the other baby, repeat. It's only been four weeks, but already I feel I can do this in my sleep (and half the time, I'm convinced I am asleep during the 3am feeding). Normally, I turn on Netflix to keep me awake, but for some reason I leave the TV off tonight. It gives me time to just watch my babies, and listen to the cicadas outside.

Now it's 3:10am. Addie is falling asleep with the bottle in her mouth, and Link has drained his. I get up and make him two more ounces.

My neighbor has Christmas lights strung up on her porch, and seeing a glimpse of those lights through a crack in the blinds makes me think of another time I was up at 3am. The time my mom was dying.

Towards the end, when my mom needed around-the-clock care and monitoring, we would take shifts during the night. Any time spent with my mom became very precious when she was diagnosed, but perhaps the midnight shift was the most precious to me.

Now it's 3:20 and both babies have finished eating, so I'm changing diapers. But I'm still thinking about the midnight shift with my mom. I remember sitting in that incredibly ugly, incredibly comfortable blue recliner next to my mom's hospice bed. I remember looking at the Christmas lights that were strung on the tree outside the window. But most of all I remember listening to my mom's snores.

Now it's 3:25 and I'm wrapping up the twins in their swaddle blankets.

I used to sync my breaths with my mom's long, even snores during the midnight shift. In, out, in out. Each breath was another moment granted to our shared existence, another second that we got to be alive at the same time. If 19 years with my mother was all I was going to get, I wanted to remember every last breath. So I spent the midnight shift curled up, breathing slowly, counting snores.

Now it's 3:30am and both babies are sleeping. Or so I think, until one of them starts to fuss when I pick them up. I don't even really register which baby it is. I just pick them up and pace the living room a few times while I rock back and forth, whispering quietly to my baby.

I think about other people who might be awake at this quiet, dark hour. Police officers responding to distress calls. Nurses making sure their patients don't have a lapse in medication. Air traffic controllers with their headsets and huge computer monitors. Spouses fetching a throw up bowl and a glass of cold water for their significant other. New parents and old parents and people who just can't sleep because they're worried about someone they love.

And suddenly, the midnight shift seems almost sacred. There's a special sanctity in giving up your sleep, one of the body's most essential functions, for the health and well-being of someone you love. It feels special, sacred, and almost holy to put someone's needs above your own, to defer your schedule for the schedule of someone who needs you. I feel connected to people around the world taking the proverbial midnight shift.

Now it's 3:35am, and I'm tucking both twins into their crib. I make sure to lay them down close together, snuggled up just the way they like it. I whisper a little prayer of gratitude as I climb into bed - gratitude for my comfortable bed and the promise of sleep, but also gratitude for midnight shifts. For the midnight shifts I spent with my mom, the midnight shifts I spend with my twins, and for the sanctity of people everywhere, taking the midnight shift to make our world a little better.

the one about my mom

Today is the day that we get to honor the life of my mom, and the day she died. It's Angel Day. On Angel Day, we love to eat hot tamales and chocolate cake, her two favorites. We also love to tie notes and pictures on balloons - our little updates on what's been happening this year - and release them up into the air.

It's easy, on Angel Day, to think about her death. But I don't want to focus on her death. I don't really want to focus on the death itself; what it's like watching someone leave you bit by bit, or what it's like to care for your own mother when she doesn't recognize you anymore. I want, instead, to focus on all the goodness and kindness family, friends, doctors, and strangers showed us during the last few weeks of her life. Some days, I think this world keeps turning on the tireless and genuine efforts of a few really kind-hearted people who love other people the best they know how.

For some reason, I keep thinking about one of the doctors. I remember he was a really tall black man, and he always wore green scrubs. One day, while dad and I were with mom, he came into our hospital room with a folders of scans. An updated prognosis.

He looked right at me. "Do you want to wait in the hall?" he asked.

I shook my head. I already knew what he was going to say. Nobody asks you to wait in the hall if it's good news.

He and my dad looked at all the scans of mom's brain tumor. In the kindest voice I'd ever heard, he said, "It looks like she'll be with you for Thanksgiving. But she would be defying all odds if she were still with you for Christmas."

I reached for a kleenex. He gave me a hug instead. It was the softest hug I'd ever received, from a man who probably has the hardest job in the world, and is still so loving when he delivers news.

I also keep thinking about all the cards that came in. Literally hundreds of cards, written by hundreds of people who love my mom. We strung them up in our office-turned-hospice-care-room at the front of the house. There were rows and rows of cards, and we started double-stacking them when we ran out of room. People shared their favorite memories of my mom. People said they were praying for our family. People made donations to their favorite charities in her name. Someone in South America had a Mass dedicated to my mother.

My mom never got around to reading those cards, and we never had the hours of time it would take to write people back. But it was so comforting to me, to know that people went to the effort of writing and sending a card for us. During those midnight shifts, when I would sit in the rocker and make sure my mom didn't need anything in the middle of the night, I would read some of those cards, using the light from the Christmas lights shining through the window, and feel like I was not so alone. If you sent a card to my family during that time, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The last thing I keep thinking about is the Primary children. The Sunday before my mom died, the Primary leaders herded all the little kids to our house during the last hour of church. It was a rainy Portland day, and all of those kids stood on our soggy Portland lawn, singing Primary songs to my mom through the open window. Love One Another. I Love to See the Temple. Families Can Be Together Forever. As I stood there, listening to their sweet voices with tears rolling down my face, I thought, "This is a choir of angels, and they're singing for me." A little choir of angels, getting their Sunday shoes wet to sing what they believed.

I could go on and on. I really miss my mom. I don't know when you outgrow needing your mother, but I haven't reached that point yet. I really wish she was here to love her grandbaby.

And thank you to all those good people who go outside their comfort zone to help and lift others. You're the ones that keep this world turning. And you're the ones who remind me the most of my angel mother. Thank you thank you thank you.

the influence of mothers

A few months after my mom died, I saw an art exhibit I'll never forget.

I was in college, and I wasn't looking for an art experience. I was just walking to class. My class was in the arts building, and I passed a small collection of multimedia art presented by the junior class. One piece in particular really caught my eye.

The piece was so simple. It was a huge, weathered wooden beam. Large silver nails had been driven in to all sides of the beam. Almost every inch of the wood was covered with nails. I was intrigued, so I walked up to read the caption.

It was done by a student who lost their mom when they were young. They wanted to represent the influence a mother has on her child. One nail had been driven into the wood for each month of shared existence between her and her mother. I think I remember there were about 170 nails, because her and her mother were on Earth together for 170 months.

I haven't been able to get that wooden beam out of my head since then. Because here's the thing. A mother isn't something you just have, in the same way that you might have brown hair or a cell phone or a tendency to overwater your houseplants. Having a mother isn't merely a possession or an achievement or a characteristic. It's not just an arbitrary piece of information on a birth certificate.

Having a mother is a huge part of who you are. The mother in that beam of wood wasn't represented by 178 specks of paint that only went surface-deep on the wood. The mother wasn't represented by another beam standing next to the first beam. The mother was represented by nails driven deep into the wood, because mothers affect us deeply. Mothers make us who we are. I've seen this over and over as a teacher. Children need their moms. They just do. Around the world, children are so blessed by caring mothers, foster mothers, adoptive mothers, mothers on Earth, mothers in heaven, teacher mothers, neighborhood mothers, and a million other women who are doing their best to shape and help children they love.

Today, I feel grateful for my own sweet mother. Our beam would have 239 nails in it, because we had 239 months of shared existence. Think about it. 239! That's a lot! I can picture my mother snuggling me and nursing me when I was tiny. I picture her bouncing me on her hip, trying to keep me happy in the checkout line or at church. Holding my little hands and teaching me how to walk. Reading with me. Singing with me. Showing me how to put lights in one pile, darks in another, reds in another. Coaching me through the very first time I made chocolate chip cookies. Teaching me how to braid using the mane of yarn on my toy horse.

I think, since I became a mother to my own little daughter, I've been feeling much more appreciative of my mom. I'm indebted to her for what she taught me, for the example she left me, and for the type of woman I'm striving to become because of her. I'm also feeling so very grateful for a step mother, a mother-in-law, and so many roommates, mentors, teachers, church leaders, and neighbors who have been mothers to me throughout my life.

This is also the first Mother's Day that I'm a mother. Being Claire's mom is such a privilege. We've been looking at pictures of my mom lately. I tell my daughter stories about Angel Grandma, the amazing woman who shares Claire's birthday and deep blue eyes. I'm trying to be loving and patient and encouraging to Claire, the way my mom was to me. I'm trying to teach Claire, laugh with her, and hold her. I'm trying to always pray for her and lead by example. And I hope, one day, when there are hundreds and hundreds of nails in the beam of our shared existence, that I will have had a positive, beautiful influence on my daughter. Just like my mom had on me.

No matter where you are in the life-changing journey of motherhood, Happy Mother's Day! You are so loved and so appreciated.

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.

Angel Grandma

There are many things I want my daughter to do. I would love for her to play a sport and a musical instrument. I would love for her to get a college education. I would love for her to find a career field she is passionate about. I would love for her to get married and raise a family. But more than any of these accomplishments, these things, I hope she is kind. I hope she is generous. I hope she is understanding of others. I hope she has the courage to forgive others, and the courage to say sorry. I hope she is brave and strong and independent. I hope she loves her Savior.

For family night tonight, we went to the cemetery where my mom is buried. I told Claire all about how she was born on her angel grandma's birthday. I told her what kind of person angel grandma is, and that I hope she becomes that kind of person. I want her to grow up hearing these stories, and knowing about the incredibly rich life her angel grandma left her. 

Each fall is a sad time for me as I remember the fall that mom died. But each year it's getting a little easier. The hurt never goes away, or even lessens. Rather, it's easier to focus on mom's life and everything she gave to me instead of on her death and everything it took from me. And I want my daughter to be part of that beautiful legacy.

choosing happiness this Mother's Day

Yesterday afternoon, I had a few minutes to go visit my mom's cemetery. Mother's Day is a really sad day for me, and I usually let myself indulge in that sadness one day a year. But this year, I want it to be a happy day. I was blessed with 19 years of shared existence with my mom (19 whole years!), and she taught me what I want to be like when I'm a mom.

I'm happy for all the memories I have of my mom. She drove a huge loud van, she opted for bananas in her cheerios every morning, and she loved a good novel.

I'm happy for step-moms, aunts, friends, teachers, and the many other amazing women who have been mothers to me.

I'm happy that my mom gets to be with my baby girl right now, bonding with her and getting her ready to come down to Earth soon.

I'm happy for Mother's Day, a day to celebrate moms, friends, grandmas, and women everywhere - whether or not they're an actual mother.

Happy Mother's Day!

Sandy Hook Revisited: thoughts from an elementary school teacher, one year later

I was once asked how much time I spend getting my posts perfect before I publish them. Perfect? Ha! Almost none of my posts are perfect. They're usually rushed and typed at 5 in the morning and barely proofread. That's just what you have to do as a blogger/full-time worker/everything else that I am. If you wait until every post is perfect, you won't have any posts. That being said, I can count 3 or 4 posts that I really do feel I got right. Maybe 5.

Last year's post on Sandy Hook from an elementary teacher's perspective was one of those. I feel like I actually got it right. (You can read it HERE if you'd like. It's one of my top viewed and shared posts.)

On Friday, almost one year after Sandy Hook, I found myself thinking a lot about my sweet children. Of course they're crazy for winter break and of course they're hyper after so many days of inside recess. But they're so good! They are respectful and hard-working. They help each other. They want to learn, and they want me to teach them everything I know. They're creative and intuitive and expressive. 

Of course bad things are going to happen. But mostly, in times like this, I see the good. Since last year, we have policemen in our school daily, patrolling the halls, eating lunch with the students, asking all the right questions. It's kind of sad to think that this is the world my students will grow up in - a world that requires daily police presence even in an elementary school - but it's also a good world. So many good and brave people doing good and brave things.

This is one of my favorite essays about Sandy Hook. It's short and isn't designed to pull at your heartstrings. I didn't even cry when I read it. It's just an example of really good writing. I recommend you read it HERE.

This video did pull at my heartstrings a little, but I love it. It's so sweet and simple. Evil did not win that day. Watch it HERE.

And lastly, I want to leave with you these pictures from Angel Day. Each year, I get balloons, tie notes and pictures to them, and send them to heaven to tell my mom about the most important things that happened over the year. This year, the balloons were blue to match the color of her eyes and cream to match the color of the roses at her funeral. (Thank you for all the cards, chocolate, and most of all kind words and hugs on Friday!)

The holidays sure are a funny time. So many bad things, so many good things. The next few posts are definitely more light-hearted than the last two have been. This week is featuring: my birthday! The last week before winter break! And the point at which my students go certifiably insanely hyper from all the Christmas cheer!

grief.

Logically, Halloween shouldn't be the holiday ruined by my mom's death. But it is.


I mean, she went from 100% fine to collapsed in the ICU a few days before Halloween. Halloween was when I found out she wasn't going to get better. November is when I dropped out of school, came home, and became a primary caregiver. Thanksgiving is when she really got out of bed and had energy for the last time. It's the day we took our last family pictures together, with her in her wheelchair and us gathered around. She died three weeks later. I buried my mother the day before my birthday. Christmas and New Years were empty, terrible affairs.


I know, it's the cruelest timing ever. But for some reason, Halloween is the holiday that's really ruined for me, not any of those other holidays. I guess because that's when it all started.


Every year, about a week before Halloween, it happens. I have an off-day. Nothing I do or say makes me happy. I end up huffing around the house, ignoring myself. I've already been sad about mom for four years, I tell myself. That's quite enough time. So stop it. I'm depressed, I'm anxious, I'm in a weird mood. And then it always ends in me sobbing in bed because, no matter what, the truth is I'm still sad about my mom.


I remember that Halloween. The last-minute flight home to Oregon. My older brother and I took the little kids trick-or-treating. We stayed back on the sidewalk, reluctant to walk the kids up to the doors. The neighbors would have asked how mom was, and I didn't have the strength to tell them. So we stayed back on the sidewalk. The neighbors would look at us, and we would nod and look away, and all of us knew without saying anything.

This time of year can be hard for me. So many memories are attached to every thing I do, every holiday we have, every week that passes. The day I found out mom wasn't going to get better. She told me she was excited to go be my angel mom, even though she was so sad she couldn't be my mom on earth anymore. The day we bought the wheelchair transport van and brought mom home to spend the rest of her days with her family. The rows and rows of cards strung up on the wall. The sanctity of those midnight watches, with the Christmas lights shining through the window, my mom sleeping in her hospice bed, and me in the recliner, quietly counting our shared breaths during the night. The day the doctor hugged me after he told me she would probably make it to Thanksgiving, but not much farther, and definitely not to Christmas. The angel choir of children from my church, standing in the soggy lawn and getting their Sunday shoes wet so they could sing "families can be together forever" through the window to my mom. The letter she left me.


I think the next post I'll write about my mom will be about all the angels. So many kind people, so much love, so much support and help and so many little miracles happened during that time. Miracles from people I could see, and miracles from angels I couldn't see. That's what I remember most about that time.


I want to focus on the good this year. Remember my mom for the nineteen years of a happy, loving, funny, gentle mother - not the seven and a half weeks of her decline. I know if she were here she'd tell me the best way to make myself feel better is to get up and serve someone, not sit there and cry. So I think I will. And, in true mom fashion, I'll have some hot tamales while I'm at it.

the race day!

Yesterday, Sam, Jason and I ran a local race. It was a 5k, which is a distance some of you are probably laughing out loud at right now, but hey, it was a good place for our family to start. We woke up early, put on our running shoes, and I pulled my hair back into my trusty nub ponytail ;) After some pacing around at the starting line, we were off!

Sam beat me, of course, but I was proud that I came in only two minutes behind him, and a few minutes under my goal time too. Jason was mostly happy that he got a gatorade at the end :)

^^ I somehow got second in my age group?  ^^

And now, if you'll indulge me with this paragraph: During the race, I kept thinking about when I ran this same race two years ago. Back then, running was a desperate way for me to deal with my grief. I'd run and run until I couldn't run anymore and then limp home crying from the heartache my mom's death left. Now, I run for exercise and fulfillment, not an escape route. I realize it's only 3.1 miles, but every mile that my stubbornly iron-deficient body will let me go feels like a mini miracle. Last time I ran this race, I had a family who couldn't come and a boyfriend who didn't. Now, I have my own little family who not only came to watch, but ran with me. I've heard the scripture "the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away." Mostly, He gives. I'm blessed.

the most important lesson from my angel mother

We rarely just had dinner as a family growing up.

I say that not because we weren't all there, but because there were frequently extra people at our table. A friend, a neighbor, someone's children.

The memories are vivid: my mom stirring dinner and on the phone. She'd say "I just love your little daughter so much. Won't you let me watch her for the day tomorrow? I know you have so much to do with _______ coming up." Which was code for "You're at the edge of your rope. I'll help."

via

That's the kind of person my mom was. She was constantly sending dinners home with people or holding fussy babies in church.

She didn't wear much make-up.
She didn't do her nails.
Or wear expensive clothes.

She was beautiful.

She was so beautiful because she understood the simplest truths in life: people are more important than things. It's not about getting followers or high scores or compliments on your newest shade of lipstick. If that's your focus, you're kind of missing the boat. It's about people. It's about time, and love.

via

Tomorrow is my mom's birthday. I sat down to play Pachelbel's Canon in D today, and it took me three times as long as normal. The notes wouldn't stop swimming around on the page. That empty part in my heart that I buried on that December day when I was nineteen kept acting up.

So here's to the most beautiful person I know: thank you for being my angel mother. Thank you for who you deliberately were, and who you deliberately weren't. Thanks for the peaceful graveside mornings, for that folded up letter you left for me to read when you were gone, and for that morning at my school. I still don't really know how the whole angel thing works, but I know you've been here, helping, guiding, protecting. I love you mom. The hot tamales are for you.

one day

I hope to have style like my mother.

I've been going through old pictures all week. 

Also, I wish I could find that dress. That silhouette, and the neckline with the bodice, and the polka dots. Sigh.

recreating the picture: 24 years later

The second I saw the picture, I knew. We had to recreate it.

My dad graduated with his masters degree from BYU in 1989. This is a picture of him and my mom at graduation (she had one child and I was a tiny secret in her belly).

So this weekend, at graduation, we tried to recreate the picture. Basically the same place, same angle, same pose, but years apart.

I love looking at this and comparing all the little details. What we're wearing, the people in the background, the quality of the picture (I edited mine to have a slight vignette effect). And I can't help but wonder if I'll have a child one day that recreates this picture. What they'll look like, their clothes, the people in the background, and how awesome photography will be then.

What do you think? 

Have you ever recreated a picture?
Would you ever?

Angel Day tradition: straight to heaven

I think I need one more day. One more day to process and be in shock and be so so sad for the community in Connecticut. It just doesn't feel right posting pictures of outfits and crafts and recipes like nothing happened, like I'm still in that completely frivolous holiday mood. I still am in a holiday mood, and I think we should be, but I just need one more day to sort things out in my mind. I hope you'll bear with me for one more heavy post.

What does feel okay to share is one of my very favorite traditions. As you know, last week I commemorated Angel Day, which is the day my beautiful mother had to leave this earth and become an angel. On that day, right at sunset, I went to the cemetery. 

I carried with me white carnations, some of her favorite candy, and cream & gold balloons {the colors I think of when I think of heaven}.

Attached to those balloons was a letter to my angel mother, telling her about my year, and pictures. Mom, I'm a real life teacher now, and I love it. Mom, we're making some big changes, and even though you already know what they are, we want to tell you anyway. Mom, I miss you.

I sent them up into the sky. I want to send them straight to heaven, and I know heaven is beyond the sky, but the sky is as close as I can get. 

So I take deep breaths, and wipe my tears, and just let go.

There's a power in just letting go.

And I watch the balloons until they're out of sight, until they reach that heaven I imagine they go to.

And I recommit. I recommit to be a little kinder, a little more giving, a little more selfless and loving. Because I know the best way to honor my strong, sweet mother is to live the legacy of love she left. It is my biggest aspiration to be like her one day.

"Everything I am or ever hope to be I owe to my angel mother." Abraham Lincoln

I love you mom.

a different kind of love letter

Dear mom,

This is a love letter. One of the greatest types of love is the love between mother and daughter. You loved me so much and cared for me so much. If I'm one one-hundredth of the mom you were, I'll feel successful.

You were the most selfless person I ever knew, mom. Remember how, as you were laying on your hospital bed, as people came to visit you'd ask all about them, shower them with love, make them feel like a million bucks, and let them cry on your shoulder when they were crying because you were dying? That's the kind of selfless you were.

Today, it's been three years. Three years since you became the type of mother that watches over me from above. The type that can't call after school ends each day, the type that can't give me a hug, the type that can't bless peoples lives directly like you used to do every single day. 

But that doesn't mean you're not with me. Remember that one day? Just walking down the hall of my elementary school early in the morning, getting my lessons ready before the kids arrived, and all of a sudden I could feel you. Walking down the hall next to me, like it was totally normal, like you did that every day. 

Maybe you are there every day, helping my class, guiding me. 

Mom did you sit at the empty chair we saved for you at my wedding? Or were you standing right next to me when I got married?

I love you mom. My favorite compliment is "you remind me of your mother," even though few in this state can give it to me. Sam and I are trying to be so good, trying to follow your example and do good things for others while we're here. 

I love you mom. Happy Angel Day. Thanks for being here with me.

Brooke

what it feels like after someone is gone

This is a tough time of year for me.

Almost three years ago, my angel mother became an actual angel.

Many people have asked me to share more, to tell what it's like to have someone so close to you be gone, and how I coped with it. Many sweet, sweet people have told me they're going through something like this too.

So as a disclaimer, this post is full of real life thoughts and feelings. It's my version of the truth, and I don't claim that the experience of losing someone close to you is universal or easy. This is just my feelings, my reality. And I'll love you whether you read on or not.

_________________

For a while, it doesn't sink in. There are too many relatives, too many funeral and other arrangements to be made, too many people bringing you dinners. But eventually, that dies down. People move on with their lives {as they should}, and that's when some realities hit you.

//we found ourselves sitting around the dinner table, the food getting cold, waiting for that last person to come sit so we could start. Eventually, someone would realize that everyone who's going to be there is there, and we'd give each other that look, and someone would reluctantly start the prayer and eating process.

//when we got back from burying her, in the midst of all the condolences cards there was a paper from the elementary school inviting the kids to parent teacher conferences. I laughed right out loud. Those are still happening? Then you have the weird realization that normal things are still going to happen, even though for you, nothing will ever be normal again.

//salespeople on the phone make you cry. "No, she's not here. No, there's not a more convenient time to reach her." 

//I realized the value of sentimentality. I was left with only a few handwritten notes and journals, photographs, a bottle of perfume, and some voice recordings to preserve my mom's life. Those became the most treasured things in the house. That's also a big reason why I started blogging. I learned the value of preserving the everyday moments, the importance of documenting a daily life, of leaving a map for others of what my life looks and feels like.

//it's hard. It's hard beyond hard, and it's not fair, and it takes a long time before it gets easier. It's a lot of crying yourself to sleep, and that grief that hurts so hard it's like a cannonball went through your stomach. 

//little things set you off, like the sound of the engine from the big car she used to drive. When you hear that engine sound on your street, your heart jumps and you think for just a moment that she's coming home from the grocery store like normal. Then you remember.

//you learn it's okay to cry in public.

//the good news is we never have to hit rock bottom. Even in the midst of all our questioning and sorrow and remembering, it's never going to be too hard to handle, because someone already handled that for us. Someone already suffered for us, and He turns grief into hope. It's a temporary separation, and the older I get, the more I realize my mom's closer than I know.

//that's the truth for me. It's different for everyone, and there's no right answer, but for me, on this early Monday morning, that's my reality and that's my truth.

Read more thoughts on my angel mother and grief here.

what matters most

This time of year can get really hard for my family. Lots of memories, the best and the worst. I don't think I want to say any more about it right now, but yesterday I asked Sam if we could just have a quiet evening at home. We turned on the lamps and burned our favorite candle (yes, my favorite candle is from Walmart. It smells like winter, but happy.). He worked on his model football stadium, and I read my book. There were so many good things to come out of that October, and I don't want to miss a single happy memory this year.

Happy Sunday. Let's all be a little kinder, work a little more diligently, and remember what matters most.

the truth is...

all images via my Pinterest

I love fall. I love the colors of fall, and the wardrobe, and the crispness of the air.

But the truth is... fall is tainted now. It's different than the falls I used to know, and now, when the trees change, I think, this was the time of year. It was the time of year that my mom went about her normal activities, doing her normal good, and then, one morning, she didn't. And she was in a hospital bed for seven and a half weeks, and then she was gone.

Sometimes in the morning, it smells like the morning she collapsed, that morning I got the text message from 800 miles away, and that first night that she almost didn't make it through.

It smells like that in the mornings now, and I love the smell, and I love fall, but it's also the smell of never being the same.

And that's the truth here on this beautiful October morning.

At 2:17am

Tomorrow I leave for Arizona, my very first in-law holiday, and it will be great.

It really will, mom. I'm excited.

But there will not be time to remember. There will not be time to think about two Thanksgivings ago, that last time you really were able to get out of bed and into your wheelchair, when we took those family pictures.

You started crying, mom, when you took a picture with me. Because you were going to miss me. And that's why I love that picture so much. I hate the cancer in your eyes, but I love that picture.

So I'm taking this moment now, mom, this crying moment at 2:28am to think about midnight watches. To think about those times we would sit in the rocker, look at the Christmas lights through the window, and make sure you were sleeping okay.

We were blessed with 19 whole years of shared existence on this earth.

19 whole years, mom.

That's almost 7,000 days.

That's 9 million minutes.

That's 600 million seconds.

That's a long time, mom, and I never appreciated those seconds more than during those midnight watches, in the blue rocking chair, with the Christmas lights soft through the window.

Every breath, every snore was one more second granted to our shared existence.

Do you remember how you asked us to put up those lights outside of the window, to give you a little cheer? I liked those lights.

And do you remember all those cards? We strung them up in rows in your room. We never got around to reading those to you, but that's not the point.

Remember how you would laugh because red dye supposedly causes cancer, and since it was far too late to worry about that, would somebody please pass the hot tamales? That was funny. 

Since I won't have time on Thanksgiving, I'm taking this moment at 2:40am to cry. I'm taking this moment to think about you, and write about you, and erase it all, and not worry about My Public Blogging Image, and to thank you, mom, for those 19 years of shared existence.

Kiss my future children for me. Kiss those chicklets right on the face. Maybe then they'll be able to remember their grandma when it's their turn to come to Earth. I hope they'll remember who you are. 

I remember.

Happy Thanksgiving, mommy. I love you.

into a better shape

Today, I'm not thinking about blogs. I'm not thinking about thrifting or DIY crafts or how to beautify the lovenest or silly little anecdotes of my everyday life.




I'm thinking about this day two years ago.




This was the day I got a text that shattered my perfect little life.




I'm thinking about red-eye flights that first night. 




I'm thinking of a few days after that, taking the kids trick-or-treating. The neighbors asked with their eyes, and found their answer when I couldn't meet their gaze.




I'm thinking of home-delivered hospice beds, midnight shifts, and a yard full of balloons.




I'm thinking of love. Love and charity and peace and angels like I've never seen before.




I'm thinking of high heels that sank into a snowy graveyard, and breath that rose into the air. Yesterday I left one red gerbera, a box of hot tamales, and a lot of tears at that cemetery. And a penny for the angel statue's collection.

I'm thinking of eternity.


Sometimes things happen in your life, and you instantly know you will never be the same again. I won't be the same. Not a day goes by where I feel like I'm the same.


But the thing is - it's not in the blueprints to remain the same. The plan is to learn and grow and change.


As Estella once said, "I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape."

untitled

It was hot when I got out of the car at the cemetery. My hair was sticking to the back of my neck, so I pulled it into a side ponytail. My high heels kept sinking in the grass as I made my way through the tombstones, so I took them off.


I sat down at her grave. I traced her name with my finger like I always do. A few weeds were growing on the corner of the tombstone. I pulled them out.


I laid on my back and looked up. It was hard to tell where the sun stopped and the clouds began.

After a while, the grass felt prickly on my legs, so I got up and ambled over to the angel statue by the infant graves.


Someone always puts pennies in the outstretched hands of that statue. I don't know why. They must think  infants have to pay a fee to be ferried across the river Styx. But who would make them pay? If it were you, wouldn't you take infants across for free?

That thought made me sad, so I went back to the grave, laid back down, and looked at the sky again. I could hear a dog yipping in someone's backyard, far away. An ant crawled onto my foot, didn't find what it was looking for, and crawled off.


A few tears ran down my cheeks, under my ears, and mixed in with the sweat on my hairline.


Later, I stood up, walked back to my car, and put my heels on again. The dog was still yipping, and the clouds were still mixing with the sun.