Dear Mom, a letter to you on your birthday.

Dear Mom, 

On your birthday this year, you would have been 73. I can hardly believe it. It feels like you’ve been gone a long time now and it pains my heart that some of the memories are fading. I’ve been thinking about you a lot this week. My kids and I have talked about you. They call you “Dede” because I remember you telling me that you didn’t want to be called “grandma”, but you wanted a fun nickname. That was you - you were the fun one! You were the life of the party and the loudest laugh in the room. I’m so different from you in that way. As I reflect on our differences and similarities, I’m comforted to know the gifts I gained from being your daughter.  Especially now as I mother my children, I think about how you tenderly cared for me and Ryan (and really all those you came in contact with). Your heart for others and the way you saw people was really special. You would be the one to notice a person who may be lonely or someone who may need some extra attention or love. I’d like to be like you in that way. And I think as I mother my own children, so much of you and your heart are still felt in my home, even in your worldly absence. I’m still trying to navigate what it means to live without you. To, as one of my teachers taught me, “live in a new relationship with the loved one who we lost.” I’m still learning how to do that, seven years later. I’m still learning what it means to live daily in the grief and the joy. To hold tenderly my heart and others’ hearts who’ve lost someone or something so near and dear. 

I know that this experience and what you taught me through your life and love and struggles and death, will have a ripple effect in the world. I believe God is in the business of restoring anything that’s broken and making it beautiful. I love these words from one of my teachers, Jessica Patterson; “Grief as we know takes us deeper than the surface. It’s a descent. Not trying to get past or beyond, but deepen into …and when we descend deeper than the surface, it remakes us. Reshapes us. Grants us new perspective and new vision than what we used to see. It helps us to touch or tap into our unlived lives.” When facing a heartbreaking loss, “we have opportunities to see that which in us that has been un-lived. It calls forward the urgency of our lives, the preciousness of our lives, the preciousness of each moment.” 

This is the beautiful, bigger picture of grief. It’s difficult and agonizing, even suffocating at times. But there’s beauty and resilience and a re-emerging to be found if we’re willing to try. I’m committed to try- and hopefully, help others do the same. 

I wish you were here to talk things through. I wish on the really hard days when I feel like I’m failing and can’t keep up, that I could call you and you would tell me it’s ok. You’d probably share some story with me about your mistakes as a mother and how it all worked out. You were my biggest cheerleader. The way you loved me was unconditional. Sometimes when I’m noticing my love for my kids - and how I know that my love for them is so, so big, so full, so motherly, I think of you. Thank you for teaching me that - for modeling that for me all the days you were here. Even though you struggled so much toward the end, I never doubted your love for me. Because of your love, I am who I am today. I miss you so so much and grieve often that my children will not know you here - but I can not wait for the day you and they will embrace and laugh and play in heaven. I know it will be and I know it will be such a beautiful restoration of this story of ours. I love you always.