As for the center piece of this post. Well, today was my mother's 5th anniversary since she's passed on. It was a perfectly gloomy day to match the gloom in my heart.
My husband, children and siblings (some of them) reached out and/or accepted my attempt to connect. It was still in part, I believe in trying to heal. Will it ever be healed? I mean, the loss of your parent. Do you ever really get over it?
I feel her presence in my life daily. I know that she is in my heart and that we remember her constantly and share memories of the moments that she shared with us and yet, today I was filled with so much sorrow.
I'm no child anymore. I know the truths about what it takes to be married, to want out, to stay together, to be unappreciated as a wife or mother at times, as a sister, aunt, woman or friend. Life isn't always fun or easy but thanks to her strengths and yes, my witnessing her weaknesses (whether in the moment or in retrospect); I have learned to be the woman that I am today.
She not only helped mold me through her love, but through her actions (wrong or right) and through her happiness and sorrows. I guess, through her life and death I have learned to live.
So today I give thanks for having had the mother that I had... She will never be forgotten because she made the time to have us all, love us the best way she knew how and shared so much of herself anytime that she could.