My Mom would have been 79 today, and I am surprised at how not okay I’m doing on her first birthday not on this planet. I’m trying to not think too much about it, but that’s ridiculous because it just makes me think about it more. I tell myself to save some of this shit for later because I have a whole year ahead of me of firsts without her. This ain’t even the first first, that was dad’s birthday in July. But this one is hers, it feels big to me.
I sit here and tell myself that she’s free now, she’s not crazy anymore. She’s not living in a house with people that she doesn’t quite know who they are most of the time, eating the same foods day in, day out because she can’t remember liking anything else. She isn’t looking to go home when she’s already there anymore. All of that’s true, but when I think of that now, today I find too little comfort in it, I feel so angry at what dementia stole from her, from all of us.
I worry that my kids will remember the scared, difficult mommom she became in the end, rather than the woman who spoiled them rotten, and loved them to pieces. They were so little then. I know they remember going to the beach, but not many particulars. Today this breaks my heart. The certain knowledge that they will not remember who she was. Dementia stole that too.
I know this is just part of it, part of grieving. I recognize on one level that this is that, even while it’s hitting me in waves hard enough to roll me ass over tin cups on another. I held it together while Dad was in the room, it’s hard enough for him without me blubbering and blowing my nose in front of him. Then I just let it roll over me. I thought about my mom and told myself to knock it off, that she wouldn’t want me to cry. But that’s not entirely true–she would want me to cry a little, because I loved her, then she’d want me to stop and carry on.
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I miss you~