First Visit

I am, right now, visiting my dad.  This is the first visit since the funeral and it is so hard. Being here is so painful.  Everywhere I look I see her, I've said this all before, but I need to say it again.  My mother's absence is tangible, I feel it with each fibre of my being.  At home I am learning to live with the pain, here, I can't escape it.

I wish I could say that I can turn my sad moments into happy memories, like I am told I should be able to do. But I can't.  For those of you following this blog, this must be sounding awfully redundant by now.  It is redundant...the pain is like the tides...in and out, sometimes it is intense, other times a bit less but always there...a constant noise in my heart.

Tonight my daughter made a Christmas Tree ornament.  She pulled out my mother's craft supplies and created an ornament.  To most, this wouldn't mean much, but to those who knew my mother, it is significant.  My mother took much joy in making crafts, particularly ornaments.  Every year, each Christmas, we would receive about a half dozen home-made Christmas ornaments from her.  She made them out of sea shells, pine cones, cinnamon sticks, some she hand sewed.  She made them out of all sorts of things.  They were unique and beautiful and I loved every one of them. I marvelled at her creativity.  My mother made no ornaments in 2009, I remember finding that very odd at the time.  In retrospect, I guess my mom was tired, but I don't think any of us realised just how tired she was.

The ornament my daughter made

Back to the ornament my daughter made.  In the midst of her creating this masterpiece, she looked up at me and asked, "If [Grandma] were alive, do you think she would be proud of me?" ...and the tide came in... I answered, "Oh yes, my sweet daughter, she would be very proud".

The Day of the Funeral, Continued

We were all there, and people were beginning to arrive to say their last goodbyes.  People who had known my mother from years ago when she was raising her family and people who knew her years later, after retirement, when she was taking joy in her grandchildren.  Any way you sliced it, it was all so hard. Yet, even in all the sadness and grief I was amazingly strong.  God was, yet again, holding me up.  He was giving me strength to move forward when all I wanted to do was crumble to the ground and cry.  My Dad's eyes were glazed while he greeted people.  I was shaking the hands and accepting kisses from people I had never met, until now.  They all seemed to know me though.  Finally the moment had arrived, it was time to begin.

There was a beautiful picture of my mother at the entrance to the church...so young and happy.  I tried to keep that picture in  my mind's eye, not the marble box.  The service began at the baptismal font where, according to her denomination, life in Christ began. Everyone began their journey to the front of the church.  My brother led the way holding the box that contained my mother. We followed next, a daughter on either side of Dad, holding him up it seemed.  It was a mile to the front of the church where we all took our seat in the front pew. Mom was surrounded by so many beautiful flowers, I remember thinking how fitting as her's was the greenest thumb anyone could ever hope to have.  She could bring a dead plant back to life, she was amazing.  Oh how I wish I had inherited that gift from her, but I didn't.

All I kept thinking was how I couldn't believe that this was finally happening, I was burying a parent, my mother. The women who, the same age as I was when I had my daughter, dreamed of a fourth child - me.  I was her baby.   The woman who raised me from infancy to giving me away in marriage and who helped me be a mom when my baby was born.   The woman who would have laid down her life for me.  How my heart hurt.

Each daughter had a part to play in the service.  I was the second to read.  My oldest sister read the twenty-third Psalm (my mother's favorite),  then it was my turn.  This was my choice:

  "But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.  For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words."  1Thessalonian 4:13-18

This I remember, a spirit-filled smile came across my face as I spoke these words: "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord."  I saw my mother, with outstretched arms running towards me,  not unlike the first time I got off the school bus from my first day at school, welcoming her baby home.  Home.  A child feels so at home in her mother's arms. Home...home.   I was comforted, I believe that I will see my mother again one day.

I'll write more about the funeral later, my heart is hurting too much to write any more.

The Day of the Funeral

I didn't know which outfit to wear.  Sounds petty doesn't it?  My husband took me out the night before I left to buy a new outfit for the funeral.  I bought two, and so didn't know which one to wear that day.  I woke up early.  I laid both outfits out on the bed -- one traditional, brown and black, morose.  The other one, pink and floral, happy.  I felt guilty even considering wearing the pink outfit.  It was so mom though, I knew that if she could have picked one, that is the one she would have chosen.  She wouldn't want me to be morbid...she would want me in bright, happy colors.   So I chose the outfit she would have bought for me, and I wore it proudly.

What an awful morning.  It was a Tuesday, and it was a beautiful day.  Yet, my heart was the heaviest it had ever been in the whole of my life.  Sounds like I am exaggerating, but I am not.  Couldn't eat, couldn't think, didn't want to talk to anyone.  I just wanted to be left alone, in my own miserably sad world.  I hated what was going to happen later today and there was not a damn thing I could do to stop it.  Death sucks...no matter how you may look at it, it sucks so much.

The funeral wasn't until 2PM that day.  We had agreed to meet at the church at 1:30.  Talk about time standing still -- it seemed like FOREVER before we left for the church.  I remember everything about that car ride to the church.  Every traffic light, every tree, every sound.  We were on the way to bury my mother, to say good-bye forever...even now, five months later, the pain in my heart, nothing can describe it.

Well, we were all there...my two sisters, brother and my dad.  The only one missing was my mom.  But she was there, she was in a beautiful marble box, the best money could buy...sitting on a pedestal. She wasn't there, and wouldn't be either.  And that thought rang over my head like a clanging cymbal.