Just some ramblings

Do you play the "do you remember what we were doing this time last year?" Game???

Geoff plays that game when we go on vacation.

The first day we're back, he'll say, "do you remember what we were doing this time yesterday?" 

The first week goes about that way.

Then randomly one month after the vacation, he'll say, "this time last month we were on the beach (or wherever we were)".

Well, the closer we get to my mother's , the anniversary of my mother's death, the anniversary of the worst day of my life, I can't help but feel like I am heading to an impending doom. It's so strange. I am literally dreading the day. I don't know why. It's not like seeing the date on the calendar is going to make it any worse or any better. She's not going to rise from the dead and haunt me like some awful ghost.

Ultimately, I think it's just the culmination of realizing that not only have I survived the first year, but I'm really not that worse off for the wear. It seems surreal to say, like I should be incapable of functioning or something. There was an episode of Criminal Minds with the kid from Malcolm in the Middle. His girlfriend gets killed in front of him and he goes totally spastic and kills the guy who killed his girlfriend and then he sleeps for days. When they find him, he's been listening to his girlfriend's voicemail on her cellphone over and over and over again so he can hear her voice. It's soooo sad. And I know EXACTLY how he feels.

My mother and I had just begun to become friends. We were sewing on sundays, she was talking with Geoff and the kids when she wanted to and they were calling her when they wanted to, she was picking the kids up and her students were doing murals at my kids' school. It was really the beginning of finally being able to appreciate all the things that my mom knew how to do and wanted to share with me and my kids.

What's the worst part of all of this? I feel completely and totally selfish for all of this. My mother was sick and in pain and somewhere in there, she didn't feel like she could physically do it anymore. I am and was truly blessed to have had such an incredible woman to call my mother. She taught me how to love, tie my shoes, paint a circle and draw a straight line. I'll never be half the artist that she was, but I will spend the rest of my life working to be half the mother and teacher that she was.

As we come to the end of the first year without her, all I can think is that I have to do the absolute the best that I can to give my children the best memories together that I possibly can.

I love her and I love the legacy that she has left me.