grieving mom again
2005-12-21, 8:47 a.m.

Lately something strange has been happening to me when I think about my mom. I have always said what a wonderful mother she was. I don’t have any memories of fights with her, even as a teenager. We were best friends. Even though she went through two marriages where I gained five step-siblings each time, she never made me feel like I had to share her, but at the same time, she made each of her step-children feel loved.

But lately, I’ve been wondering if I’ve over idealized my mom. I mean in my memory she was this saint of a woman, mother, and soul. Was she really that perfect? Did I just have her on a pedestal? The older I get the more I see that there is no way she could be as ideally perfect as I have her in my memory. What made her scared? What made her happy? Was she proud of me? Was I the daughter she wanted me to be? Am I like her? How did she love her partners? Was she too much of a push over like me? What were her faults? I so wish I could ask her these questions, that I could have that adult relationship with her that I missed out on. I feel myself grieving her lately, all over again. I crave her comfort.

Last night I lay in bed and thought about my life as compared to my mother’s, I realized that my life is very different then her’s was. I mean, she had parents all her life. She had one natural born child and many step-children. She was surrounded by family. I, however, am not. My life feels stark next to hers. I wonder if I don’t have kids yet because I could never live up to being the mother that she was. I don’t know what it all means, but I know that last night I felt stripped down, bare, compared to her warmth and comfort. Maybe all this was coming out because I was watching that Barbara Walter’s special about Heaven. I want to believe that someday I’ll see her again, talk to her, feel her embrace, but I don’t think that I will, at least not in the form th at I know and remember. But that’s for another day, another entry.

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