Losing someone is never easy. It doesn't matter if the loss is expected, due to illness, or if it is sudden. When someone is in the here and now one moment and gone the next, the hole they leave behind is never quite fully filled.
No matter what age you are, I don't think there is anything that prepares a person for the loss of their parent. It's like suddenly realizing that no one told us this was going to happen, when deep down, since the time we were quite small, we knew it would.
When Mother's time came to depart, I thought the world might possibly end. Even though it has been a little over six years, there isn't a day that goes by that she doesn't enter my thoughts. I still find myself, when looking for a specific recipe or trying to come up with someone's name or ancestry, thinking I'll just call Mother and ask her.
She may not be here in the physical world, but she has proven many times, that she is here in spirit. I could make a list, as long as a trip to the local store, about the times she has made her presence known, but I also know she also lives on in each one of us.....the ones she left behind.
Try as I might, to not do it, I find myself being Mother over and over again. From cooking to wanting to tear something up, she lives on in me.
I see her in my children. My youngest daughter has her house is in the middle of a remodel. She has two young children and has gone back to school.....to be a chiropractor. Yes, Mother lives on in her and she would be proud.
I see her in my sister, Blanche. Blanche loves shoes, Mother had more pairs than Imelda Marcos. One day Blanche pulled up in the alley outside my house. As I watched her from the kitchen window, I was awe struck by how much she looked like Mother, something I had never noticed before. Plus her shoes looked just like a pair Mother used to have.
Mother had a dog in her last few years. I love animals, but this dog was undoubtedly the ugliest dog I had ever seen....well, except for Mr. Winky. Mr. Winky belonged to Mother's cousin and he was really UGLY. I accompanied Mother to the pound when she decided she needed a dog and I tried to talk her out of the choice she made. I didn't succeed and she brought Bonnie, the part Shih Tzu part something else, like dish rag, home. They were quite the pair and Bonita, as I called her, accompanied Mother 99% of the time.
Yesterday, my sister Lela sent me a text message, along with a picture. She thought maybe she and her husband had lost their minds, or as she put it, "had been struck with the insanity bat." They had a new pet, a dog. The picture was of a small Chihuahua-Pomeranian mix puppy named Sammy.
I have an aversion to small dogs. It's not that I don't like them, I just like a dog to be big enough that if I step on it, I don't injure or squish it. I think this stems from something that happened when I was about 8 or 9 years old. My friend was at my house and I had to show her my neighbors' new dog, a bright orange Pomeranian named Snooks. Long story short, my friend picked Snooks up, Snooks bailed off the back of my friend's shoulder and landed on the sidewalk......breaking both front legs. The rest of the story wasn't pretty at all and that, I'm sure, is why I don't do small dogs.
Just so you know, Snooks survived, walked around on little doggy splints for about 6 weeks and lived a long and happy life.
So now Lela has a dog and I can picture her driving in the warm Arizona sunshine, Sammy at her side, talking to the dog as if Sammy might answer back. Yes, Mother lives.
I'm a firm believer in the after life. As hard as it is to say good-bye, I know that just the shell we live in is the only thing that really dies. The soul, the essence of who we really are, lives on and let's us know we are not alone. Pay attention, they are always with us and remember to look and appreciate what they left behind, to live on in us.
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