She would have been 93...

Mom & me on her last Mother's Day, 2012

I wish I could tell you this gets easier, but I can't.

I'm in the beautiful Betkshires and the sun is shining and my children are raucously splashing in the pool, but I'm in the bedroom quietly crying.

Today would have been my mother's 93rd birthday.

I know I was lucky she made it to 90. But that doesn't matter. On her hundred and twentieth birthday, should I live so long, I will still miss her, mourn my loss.

The world is a poorer place without my sweet, saucy, loving, funny, brilliant mother in it.

Even though she was barely there when she left. Even though she was a wafting wisp of her former self, I felt the earth sigh and plunge a few degrees colder as I watched her animating spirit vacate the premises, that wan day, two and a half years ago.

I don't have time for this sodden mantle of debilitating grief. The boys' B'nei Mitzvah is a little over a month away, and I am frantically busy between now and then. Two school years starting, Dan traveling for work nearly non-stop this fall; and we're down to one viable, often already booked sitter.

And yes, it's a joyous occasion we're preparing for. And yet the sadness keeps leaching in. There will be no grandparents present to dance the hora at their Bar Mitzvah party. No great aunts nor uncles neither.

I knew it was nigh unto impossible for my mother to dance at their weddings, and witnessing college or even high school graduations unlikely. But for a while there, we had held out hope for her presence  at their Bar Mitzvahs.

I would have asked the universe for three more years with her, if I could have. But I know what the answer would have been. Our time is our time. No more, no less.

And for the rest of my time, I will miss her for at least a little bit of every day; and a whole lot more on days like this, her birthday, when she would have been 93 years young.

If only...

Is this thing on?

Me, today, post-opthamologist visit

(tap, tap)

Hello?

(deep amplified echo rising up from the empty amphitheater)

I don't even know where to begin after a full year of silence.

(throat clearing... more awkward silence)

I have heard that the personal blog is dead. That no one reads these things anymore, that it's now ALL about facebook and twitter and social media modes that trip off my son's tongue, but I can't even...

(closes eyes... opens them)

I just want to tell some stories again.

<whispers> Can I do that?

(listening... no one says "no")

Ok, then...

It's not like I haven't written in a year.

I just haven't finished anything. Bits and fragments of posts sit in the "notes" section of my iPad, sandwiched between "to do" lists and homework schedules, insurance information and Bar Mitzvah plans.

My well is not run dry, but, rather, my bucket full of holes.

The winter has been bleak and March, that asshole month, did not fail to deliver its requisite punches (my late parents' anniversary, father's birthday, father's death date). Spring's blossoming flowers always invoke my mother, mixing the bitter with the sweet, and always now with the missing.

And, once again, the school-year's end looms. How did this year pass?

(With a crawl and a shamble and a speedy blur.  With two boys growing through three shoe sizes and nearly my height. With homework done and screen-minutes counted. With small victories and midnight pints of Ben & Jerrys.)

I think I may be back.

I'll let you know tomorrow.

(drops mike, goes to run Jacob's bath)


Also? Linking to Just Write because I love and have missed Heather.