I Miss my Mother

 I love getting ready for Christmas. I love digging out the favorite decorations, the treasured objects, the precious memories. Just like everything else in life there is change to that. Some things stay packed away. Some placements change and some remain the same. I searched yesterday for a framed picture I'd given Mom and Dad a few years ago of Mom, myself and my two brothers standing on the steps of our house at 619 Regent St. prepared to leave for Moncton Christmas morning. The photograph is small but the feelings were huge as I searched for it knowing it had to sit on the small yellow table in the open area. The twinkling lights of the ceramic Christmas tree my mother made and the album cover from my childhood accompany pictures of my growing up family and my beloved parents. I miss them both but yesterday my heart kept reminding me how much I miss my mother. Funny how last night's jumble of dreams gave me both of them. Dad was eating with Chapin's kids and I was holding a new baby up to show Mom.  This morning as I write this my eyes fill with tears as I realize  the powerful weaving in and out of past , present and future our emotions guide us through. This present Christmas has so many gifts and challenges and all the Christmases of my past are thrown in as well as hope of future Christmases. And to top it off the song So This is Christmas comes on the radio. I got through Saturday Zac's 42nd birthday, the twenty second one we've had without him. I shed a few tears but did not have the big cry I anticipated. Perhaps that is coming soon. The big cry doesn't hurt anything and neither does the constant ache. Both are love and I am thankful for that love. I miss the comfort of that love when I can show up at Mom's and just be. She would feed me and wrap me in her love and the visit whether long or short would equip me to keep going. It still does. But now I am the mother , the grandmother and I am truly grateful for that honor. But oh how I'd love to walk through my mother's door and feel the status of being her special guest, her beloved daughter. Thankyou Mom for all the times you gave me that.

Zac changed the lyrics to 'So this is Christmas and what have we done We brought our mother with us and it's not any fun.' This was after a memorable fiasco of a Christmas Eve run. Oh the wonderful treasured memories.