Almost an anniversary

On the other hand, it is never easy to write about my mother. I do not think of her often anymore, and now when I do it is with a tremendous feeling of emptiness so great I cannot describe it. As time goes by I feel that I need her more, not less, yet when I reach out my hand to hers for that reassuring contact, it falls away empty.

In the early time after she passed away, I did not fee this sense of loss. We were not living close to each other, so it seemed no different to be where I was with her gone, than to be where I was with her miles away. In either case, she was present in memory, and with love. Either way I evoked her in memory, thinking of the last time I saw her, or some occasion earlier, and the memories did not change because she had died. I only felt a reflection of the sorrow that others expressed, with a need to reach out to them with comfort.

But the more time expands between then and now, the more I feel the hole in my life that only she might be able to fill. Or perhaps breach: because when I went to her in physical retreat from the problems of the day, and yet I never discussed them with her. We talked about very little, mostly keeping quiet beside each other. We drank tea, we chatted about family or perhaps she corrected my crocheting. Somehow she in her self was a secure removal from daily troubles. After the children came, there were times I simply slept, on the sofa or bed in her room, free from the burdens that I could not escape anywhere else.

This week happens to be one of the decades of the anniversary of her passing. Everywhere I am confronted with re-collections and the sense of emptiness. Even the weather mimicks the unseasonable chill and rain of the week she passed away. I am a creature dependant on the facts

There is something I need to record about her, or maybe a but for now I can only curl into a small space and ask for rest. I need to go now.