Mom would have called today her birthday, even though it was celebrated on the 11th of July for most of her life. After years of believing it was the 11th, she got a copy of her birth certificate, which stated it was on the 7th. Unhappy with her mother for getting it wrong for so long, she started celebrating it on the 7th in spite of her mother saying “it was the 11th. I ought to know, I was there.” In the end, mom decided her birthday just went from the 7th till the 11th. Well, happy first day of your birthday mom. I love you!
I still find it so difficult to look at your pictures. You were supposed to be here another 20 years or so. You would be turning 64 now. Instead… Instead I just hurt inside. Instead, I have a hole in my heart. Your father lived till he was 90. His funeral was two years before yours. At his, you sat and you cried on the very spot you would lay only two years later. Momma, these thoughts! They kill me inside. I have such sorrows at that cemetery in Duschene, Utah. At your father’s funeral I spoke to Nancy, and remembered him, though I was only five when he died, and it was shortly after that that I remember being at that place. And how I still think the kids and grandkids at you father’s funeral should have thrown back shots of whiskey atop his coffin, to honor him as the man he was, rather than the sunshine we tell eachother at funerals.
When I woke up the morning of April 9th, everything was normal. Four agonizing days later, your favorite drawing was a stark reminder of you. Your mother took off to Denver without me, and without asking if I wanted to go. Add it to a long list of things for which I’ll never forgive her. You, always the peace maker, would tell me to. You’d lie and say you had, then drop it, and try to forget it. You’d mean it well enough to be convincing. I’ll never know the truth. I’ll only know that you were always a better person than she, even though you worried deeper, and more that you were not.
Happy Birthday mom. Unhappy Birthday mom. I know you suffered so much. I am relieved that you are relieved of your pains. I’d be so selfish to want you back to continue your suffering just for me. I know you’d do it in a minute if you could. I know you would tell me to tell your grand babies every single day that you love them. So, I am so selfish. I wish so much you could just tell them yourself!
Dammit Mom!