These past days (weeks, months?) I’ve been so caught up in a job and driving places and sharing in wonderful and major life events. It’s been like a giant train speeding ahead and all I can do is look forward.
And there my mother’s ashes sit of the shelf. Static. Cold. Still permanent.
This morning I woke up to the rain dropping through the leaves in my back yard. I think of my mother. I think of the new house I just bought. I talk about the first joint checking account I will open with someone. I talk about all the weddings I’ve been to and that they were just the right kind of love. I talk about you, and how I wish we could talk.
Last summer I got to write and grieve and write and grieve. It was a fevered sort of peace that let me process and had me desperate to hold onto you.
Then I took a job, and it has turned out to be heavy, and distracting, and full of its own consuming challenges. I can’t stop because the job won’t let me, because I love these little kids, because public education in the city of Philadelphia is a joke compared to what it should be and it tears my heart everyday that I can’t make it better.
You, there on the shelf, are you still a part of this struggle with me?
She comes back to me in waves while I’m moving through stress and joy and moments.
You still guide me when I feel like a failure and I need someone to tell me that they love me, that I can do anything, that there’s no reason to question myself because of course you know I can.
You are still there in pockets of my every day.
But I want to write you in permanently. I want to welcome you back through the words of your story. I want to remember you always: not just in the tattoo I want to get or a picture that shows your smile.
Sometime in 2014 you sent me a card that says on the front: “Every day is a gift” and in the middle: “Pretend tomorrow is from me.” You crossed out the part below that said “Happy Birthday” and wrote “Happy You are Loved day.”
Every day is a gift from you, mom. I miss you and I’ll never forget.
i carry your heart with me(I carry it in my heart)
