As time goes by

Six months. It's been six months since we lost my mom. It's almost unreal to me, that half a year could have passed without me seeing her or talking to her, that we made it through Easter and Mother's Day and her birthday without her there to celebrate, and that life has simply marched on.

I missed her on those occasions I mentioned, of course, as well as numerous occasions not mentioned. But I also miss her at odd, mundane times. I miss our Tuesday night phone chats, and the times I'd call about substitutions in one of her recipes. I miss telling her good news, and her sympathy over bad news. I miss a million little things that add up to a person, a loved one, a relationship.

The grief is not so present, so sharp, as it once was. But it still comes, as I imagine it will for a long time. It's tempered by the memories I'm so grateful for, funny and serious and happy and sad, from childhood through adulthood.

I had dinner with a dear childhood friend recently, someone I hadn't seen in a long time. She has children of her own, and as we talked about Life, The Universe, and Everything, she said that she as watched her daughter with her BFF, it struck her that as much as you learn from your mom, there are also things you learn from your best friend's mom. I'd never thought about that, what my friends and my Girl Scout troop took away from spending time with my mom. But it pleases me that in some small way, there are other women in the world who experienced even a small measure of being my mom's daughter.

Comments

[Jennifer]

This is beautiful. *hugs*