23 years ago, also a Saturday, just before 6 a.m. I was aware that I heard the phone ring. A few minutes later, my father was standing in the room with the news. My mother had died.
I was 26 years old. Exactly one month prior, I walked out of the stage door of Whitman Hall at Brooklyn College having performed my recital for my degree. I made the choice to return to Vermont as my mother’s long illness had progressed very quickly over the previous few months. 10 days after returning home, she entered the hospital and died 20 days later.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about how I still feel her loss so keenly. We had just begun to reach that point in a mother/daughter relationship where it moves into a deep friendship. I lost that as well as my mother. I had also arrived at the moment of my life where I was finally coming into my own. But with her death, I felt….stopped.
And that is how I still feel today. I have tried to write this blog for hours. I keep writing about choices, emotions, hopes, etc…and it all sounds forced and self serving.
SO…Mother, I miss you terribly. I know I’ve made choices in my life that took me on a different road than I was planning. Some of that came about with losing you; losing your advice, support, and opinion.
I am working hard to examine my choices and continue to move forward. How I wish you were here to talk to…to give me advice. I try to think what you would think or say, but I’ve lived almost as long without you as I did with you. It’s hard to know what you would think anymore.
I think I am making progress on my journey forward. I think you would approve of some of my recent choices. I feel more and more I am finally coming into “me”. I hope you would like who I have become.
I love you, Mother.
6 comments:
I can relete to everything you write, Margie. I lost my father 12 years ago and miss him greatly. Your mother is looking down on you and smiling...
Margie, darling, your mother would be so proud of you, she wouldn't be able to contain herself! Your kind heart, loving soul, bold character, and ever-searching spirit are testaments to your mother's influence, and your own achievements. I know this last year or so has been especially hard for you, and your willingness to move forward, even when it's so very, very hard, just gives us more proof of the wonderful woman you have become. Proud of you? Hell, she'd bust her buttons!
I really admire that you've kept up with your blog. I opened a blogger account when you posted your first one and have yet to write a single word (so much for that English degree and wanting to be a writer I guess). You write genuinely, and though I don't know who "us" is, I think most of us benefit greatly from that. At least I do. :-)
I never had the opportunity to know your mom, Margie, but I'm sure she'd be very, very proud of the woman you have become. Heartfelt hugs.
your mom would be proud of you ... and so would your dad. as a dear friend told me recently after my dad passed away -- we will never forget, but we somehow learn to survive with the holes in our heart that they left. hugs and prayers to you, dear friend. love, Linda
I thank you so very much for sharing your mom with me. Through you, I have felt her love and acceptance. Both of you contribute to my process of healing old wounds. You told me once that your mom would have loved me. I remarked back then I might have been running wild and not someone she'd picture her little girl with. You warmly responded that she would have welcomed me into your family's home. Now I'm wiping up tears, jeez!
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