One Year Without You

I've been trying to write this for 2 months anticipating or rather dreading this day September 26th, 2018. Marking one entire year without my mom. How is that possible? Months ago, I thought I'd have pushed through to the 'other side' by now. Finding this quote has given me more courage to endure grief. I don't have high expectations of what it will look like each day but I do know this. I retain those deep, raw maternal sentiments she gushed onto me with her loving eyes, her gentle arms and her supportive words within the woven fabric of my soul. What if those pieces unravel? Who will be there to mend them? To sew a new patch? I have to do that. On my own. I will have to care for myself in the ways she taught me. For this reason I dug deeper than ever before into my purpose as a mother and wife. It's beyond fulfilling and I am finally reaping what I have worked so hard to achieve. A loving, wholesome family built on values, respect, and over-the-top "celebrate for no reason" kind of love.  ~Just like my mom did~

Or: "It's possible that you never quite
miss your mom
as much as when you are
trying to be one yourself"

I have been given such purpose with her passing. My parenting style has changed. I am more grateful, more patient and more engaged. I am savoring moments with my children and cutting myself a break when I need it. I feel less guilty and more full. I have always been a worrier, but I don't worry about whether or not I am a good mom. I worry about how my kids will carry on without me because I'm struggling myself. The only thing I can do about that is fill this time I have with them making memories that ooze with love. In a Mother's Day card my mom wrote to me: "you make everything fun and the love just oozes out of you." When it would go a few months between visits after moving to Michigan she would tell me she needed her "Kristin fix" and everything would be alright. Well right now I need "my mom fix."

I often feel like her.

There are days when I'm driving or walking through this thing called life and feel like I am her but in my body. Now that I am raising two kids I feel like I do so many things she did. Without trying. It's just coming through me and most days it still takes my breath away. Would I have felt so much of her running through my veins if she was still here? Or is this life's consolation prize for me after losing her? 
I'll never know the answer to that. I am trying to hold tight to the fact that this feeling of being her is a blessing. This way that I am connecting with her... it feels authentic, not strained, not desperate, not deliberate, but visceral. What if she is vicariously living through me...? That notion is so big. I've always thought of vicarious living as something from one living person to another living person, but maybe there is more to it than that. Maybe I'm trying the one trying to hold on in any way I can.

I started to fear the day I forget her laugh, or how she smelled or what holding her hand felt like. Pictures only do so much for jogging my memory. The unfortunate part is lately my memory of her lately has been full of the last week of her life. Learning how to inject a needle where it hurt her the least, listening to her cough and struggle to breathe, the sound of the oxygen machine, the alarm waking us up to give medicine, the old blue robe she wore, etc. Those memories are vivid and dark at the same time. She died at 11:59 pm on September 26th so I thought the anniversary would be hardest but lo and behold I am surprised again by grief. This next morning is worse! I just realized a year ago right now, I was sleeping by her side, by her lifeless body. I woke up many times that night hoping she'd make that awful wheezing I dreaded days prior, or moving the bed ever so slightly. Any signs of life. I woke up hoping for a miracle thinking I was having a nightmare. Each time I reached out for her she would not move and continued to grow colder making it harder and harder to go back to sleep. Truly a nightmare from which I would never awake.

I am ready for those memories to fade and I know they will. I also know they will never disappear for it was truly the worst experience of my life. So much has changed in one year. I have become a mother of two precious children. One of which my mother doesn't know. How has she not held him, played patty cake and told him "kiss kiss" while smothering him with grandma love? That pains me. Allison told me just the other day how sad she was her little brother he will only know his CaliGram by stories and pictures. While I'm grateful people will fill him in I wish so much more for him. I wished so much more for her too and I'm taking it on myself to live how she hoped me to. To fully submit to the raw maternal calling that has awakened in me since her passing. Motherhood has never felt more like a gift than it does now. My greatest blessings call me "Mom" and for me those two little people are going to be my way of paying it forward. Continuing her legacy. Making her beam with a glow from above. Using it as my guiding light. A new way of seeing. A new definition of self.