I woke up this morning about the time church was starting. Dang it! When am I going to get it together. Once again, I stayed up too late working on a project...drafting plans for a new craft table for my kids and I. I am my own worst critic so when I don't do something that I think is important, such as church, I feel guilty. The guilt comes entirely from within, mind you. Already feeling down-trodden I got into the shower continuing to think about having let myself and my kids down...and my mom. Afterall, it was one of my mother's requests on her deathbed. "Find a church home and get my granddaughter into Sunday School," she said. I followed through a couple of years later when our next child would need to be baptized. Church was a way of life for me growing up. The only acceptable reason to miss it was severe illness or injury. I even remember several communions that nearly made me lose it right there on the alter because I was so hungover. Since we'd moved from Hot Springs I hadn't found a church to attend regularly and it distressed my mother. It was obviously very important to her for her to need to tell me through all the pain she was experiencing. So, my thoughts strayed from having missed church to missing my mother.
Why is it that the best place to break down emotionally is in the shower?! I suppose the water muffles sobs and conceals tears. She's been gone over four years now but there are still moments when I miss her so completely. There have been many times recently when I could have used her maternal advice and it saddens me that my son will know her only from pictures. The only Grandmother he will know on my side is truely not his Grandmother but my father's wife. She would have adored and doted on him. There have been other times that one of her hugs would have chased all the storm clouds away for at least a brief time. Those hugs are what I miss the most...and the random phone calls that began with, "I just needed to hear your voice." She was my best friend.
While thinking about our once frequent phone calls I suddenly realized to my horror that I couldn't remember what her voice sounded like...or her laugh. Had the memory of my mother's sweet soothing voice been pushed out of my mind by some random piece of crap information or could I just not, in my heightened sense of anxiety, recall it now? Disheartened I climbed out of the shower and proceeded with my day brooding.
It's funny; while I was pregnant with my son I often hoped that, for one reason or another, I would feel or see my mother in the delivery room. I guess that I hoped I would lapse into some drug-induced trancelike state and see her. When there wasn't time for any drugs I hoped for a pain-induced trancelike state. It never happened and to be honest, I was disappointed.
I suppose that there have been plenty of other times that I've felt she was near me. Not necessarily in a physical sense but in an obscure emotional sense...in that she is part of me. Whenever I see a cardinal (my grandmother's favorite bird) or a blue bird (my mother's) I feel the warmth of her with me. In the same token, by teaching my children about the different birds I am passing on a piece of her to them. And that stupid dimply smile of mine that I hate...until I see a picture of mom and realize that it is her beautiful dimply smile...then I embrace it.
I remember shortly after my Grandmother had died she told me of a dream she'd had. She walked down the isles of a church and found her mother sitting in a pew waiting for her. She sat down and she had a long conversation with her. She said when she woke up she was saddened because there had been so many other things she'd wanted to talk to her about. She told me she couldn't wait to see her mother again because she missed her. At the time I couldn't understand it. I had nothing to relate her feelings too until I lost her. It brought me solace when she passed, that she was finally getting to finish that talk with her mother. I guess it doesn't matter what age you are when you lose a parent. There is always a little piece of you waiting impatiently until you can feel that hug and hear that voice saying, "I've missed you so."
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