Mom....

I've used my web-pages as therapy for the past few years...the creating, writing, and finishing...Some have fallen to the wayside and never been finished...some have become a permanent fixture in anything that has to do with 'me'. I don't know what I planned for this page...I guess for now...it will just be my thoughts. I never realized how much an effect you leaving this plane of existence had on me...but as I look at the past few years in retrospect, it just blows me away. Here I now stand, a single mother of 3 children...in a world that I know not much about. I spend my days devoted to a job that is fulfilling but fills up too much of my time and nights filled with trying to fit everything else in. 'Everything else' never gets done. I look back and see a mother that in my eyes is deemed next to perfect. And how I spent so many years trying to obtain that same image...and it is not as if I have given up...but as if it is pushed aside with the other things that need to be done one day. I am not the me that I have always envisioned. I don't blame your leaving for any of this...and grief, I know, comes and goes in stages. I wonder how many stages are left before it is over...or it is ever over?

I have doubted my God, I have doubted my faith....I have doubted everything I have ever stood fast beside.....for longer then I would even like to mention.. For a year or more, I could not bow my head to pray...not to a man that took my mother away...for that time, I prayed to a woman that was taken away from me...Knowing even at that time, that what I was doing...was wrong...but I had lost all faith, in anything that was living...anything that was obtainable. A lost lamb in the pasture...with only a "clay pot" of a vessel to bow my weary head to.

Everything that I had ever believed in...has seemed to shatter right before my eyes...my whole world has been twisted around...and I found myself one day, alone in a world, that I didn't even like. I continued to smile...continued to live for the little angels that I had a part in bringing into this world....but inside I was dying more and more each day. I have tried separating myself from everything and everyone ..to no avail. Tried growing bitter and cold...to block out the pain. And why? When you were alive, we didn't speak every day...we didn't go out to the mall all the time or sit and talk for hours every day...you were always my friend, along with being my mom...but my life didn't revolve around you...why was it hitting me so hard. Why did my world explode the day you left? Why did I ever say to you ..when you were laying in that hospital bed...that I had faith that you would make it through?? How come I still pick up the phone to call you..

I've had to ask in the past few years, what is a family? and how come...when someone dies...it seems that it all goes away...and all we are is related by name. Because, what are we now? A group of kids without a mother. Our 'ties that bind' aren't tying anymore. There is bitterness and hurtful words...there is a house that just doesn't feel like home anymore...and a man that is left, that we aren't paying attention to. What is 'Dad and Mom' without Mom? Is it just another reminder...that you won't be in the kitchen...or on the couch....ahhh Mama...years go by and I still miss you just as if it were yesterday that I was a child. And why oh why...years between this day and then....haven't I grown use to it?

Why am I still avoiding or neglecting the one that is left...that made up the word "parents".... Now, when I know, that he needs me...needs 'us' more then anything. I've taken what happened, and then what has transpired and alienated the one that is left living. Even though, without him, I would not be here today.

I look at Daddy, and I see a frail and old man. Knowing my pain, I can't even imagine his. But it is not something that I want to confront...not something that I want to have to deal with. And I understand the bitterness that develops toward me, because of that. And I am ashamed to say, that is far easier to deal with...then what the bitterness is ...of you being taken away from me. I don't understand this....But sometimes, I want just to wipe my hands of it all, I feel like I lost both of my parents, I feel like I have lost everything when God called you home...
What is one without the other?

Moving on and dealing with...and getting use to the pain, I am still baffled by the emotions that stir inside of myself around the 28th of each month...I still live with the memories of someone that is not around anymore...and even though sometimes I feel I have lost my best friend, I am finished looking for answers, I am now...realizing that even though it has had such a dramatic effect on my life, and I deal with it every day...and want to tell everyone, that each moment does count...even if you are scared to say thanks for all the years...even if you have been allotted the gift of saying goodbye....you have to learn to deal with and live with and give thanks for each moment that you have. In God's infinite wisdom and his enduring love, he has brought a wonderful man to help me with all of this...it is a long road, I know that much to be the truth...and I am happy to say that my faith, has once again been restored...and even with losing the 'tie that binds' that there is always ties there...the knot was pulled together years ago....and what you spent so much time in teaching us.....as sisters and as brothers...and more so, as friends....did not go in vain.....You did a wonderful job...you were the best....and even though I miss you , and always will....your memory lies deep inside of me, I have much to work on, that is for sure....

But I am in full realization, that Jesus Christ is beside me in my travels......