When my mom passed away three months ago, I completely lost myself. I thought I was so strong, so independent before. I realized how selfish I had been, how that was not the person I wanted to be. But I also realized that I was only acting how I'd been taught, for my mother was always a very strong, very proud person. With her passing, I was completely shell shocked by the love and support that I was surrounded with. So many people shared such wonderful memories, and they gave me that part of my mother that I'd always been missing. Because she wasn't just my mom, she was a daughter, a sister, an aunt, and a friend. I feel like I'm getting to know her now better than I ever did, and there's nothing I can do about it. I've had so many of those days in the past few months where you cry until you can't breath, you don't want to get out of bed, nothing makes you happy, you blame everything on everybody. And I think that's okay. I definitely needed to feel that way. My good friend, Ellen, is great at reminding me not be hard on myself and that it's okay to feel these feelings. After all, didn't I just lose one of the biggest parts of my life?!
So anyway, all this time I've been walking around, very unsure of each step, each choice. Everywhere I turn is a heart wrenching memory or thought about how I'll never get to see mom again. Never hear her voice or her laugh (that laugh!), never hear her tell me stories about when me and my brother were little. How she'd call me her 'Little Missy' or 'Sissy Lou Lou' or 'Missy Thing' or any number of other silly nick names she had for just about everything. I thought, I can't just call her anymore to ask her how to make such and such thing? Or to vent about this or that. No more Joni Mitchell sing-a-longs. Never get to drop the kids off with Grandma for the weekend. No more hugs and kisses.
I know we all feel these sorts of things when we lose someone very close to us, well not all of us, grief is certainly different for everybody. Having this tragedy in my life has opened my eyes to a lot of things, some not so good, but all valuable just the same. And I'm learning more each day, about what is going on in the world around me, about what is going on in the world inside me...and I've found that talking about things really helps a lot. If we understand eachother's stories and even our own, maybe we could live more harmoniously?
Okay, so what am I doing here? What's blogging? Do all bloggers also ask this question, out loud? I'm not sure what I'm doing. All I know is that I love to cook and make art and take pictures and play outside and spend time with family and friends and listen to music and ..... The idea was spurred by my motivation to cook some of my mom's old recipes. It seems that I've found a sweet comfort in being able to taste those tastes and smell those smells that I can so vividly remember growing up with. As I reflect on my childhood, I realize how mom was always cooking something up in the kitchen. The dishes that I'm now assembling, I remember thinking how mom threw them together with such ease. We pretty much always had home cooked meals, usually mom in the kitchen and dad on the grill, and we always ate at the dinner table. And in my early teen years, we coined the phrase, "scrappy dinner" for those dinners where you just kind of throw a bunch of leftovers and other random things together. I find myself making these kinds of dinners rather often, being a financially unstable lady in my early 20s! I'm sure you know what I'm sayin.' But, hey, scrappy dinners can be pretty great, too! So, anyway, I guess I've been renewed with this burst of life, this discovery that I can turn my grief into a self-healing journey.
Not only am I cooking up a storm, as they say, but I'm picking my charcoals and paints back up and expressing myself creatively again. Why do you care? You probably don't, or maybe you've been through a similar situation and it just helps to see how others handle it. I know that I enjoy hearing people's stories, I mean, that's why we read, right? Well, I'm pretty sure we all have a big story inside us waiting to be told. Somehow. This is my story. Unfolding before me...
