Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

Mother’s Day is the hardest day of the year for me. It’s the biggest reminder of how desperately I wish you were here. I miss you every day but I guess today is different because I get to glimpse purposefully inside so many other daughters being with their moms and I don’t get to do that anymore.

I remember so vividly the gift I gave you on your last Mother’s Day—it was a picture of me as a kid, maybe 3, in a bathing suit and laughing by our pool. I was so happy in the photo, that was why I picked it—just a kid being happy, not a kid being sick. And on the photo in black sharpie I wrote I love you. You kept it on your nightstand.

I wish I had gotten to know you as an adult. I wish we had been able to grow together as I became me. I’m a different person than when you died. Your death made me a different person—kind, generous, more selfless and less selfish. It also made me more timid and more fearful. It changed completely who I was. I wish I were this person when you were alive. I was in my early 20’s, self-absorbed, and maybe even bitter because of my illness. I’m sure I didn’t listen to anything you said or treat you the best. I’m sure I said things I didn’t mean. I'm sorry. But no matter what I couldn’t function normally without you—you were my first call of the day and my last call of the night and several calls in between. And I still can’t functional normally without you. So much so that I mostly stopped talking on the phone after you died. I can’t stand that the other person on the end of the line is never going to be you again. I still scroll through the last text messages you sent me—the last communication we ever had over technology.  

I can’t believe the things I’m experiencing without you. It hurts my heart that I went to South Africa without you. Or that I spent the day on the Shark Tank set without you, because Robert would have loved you. As everyone did. He would have made a deal with you for something! You were dynamic, intoxicating, strong, powerful, smart and beautiful. You never took no for an answer and you were easy to admire. You lit up any room you were in. You were everything I hoped I would turn out to be.

Saying that I miss you just doesn’t seem right because it is so much more than that. I feel so incomplete without you. My heartbreaks for the things I never saw you accomplish, I’m always thinking how food has taken off so much now and you would be running circles around todays best restaurateurs.

Since I was little our thing always was saying to one another "I love you to the moon and back". And mom today I love you to heaven and back. 

 

loss and adapting

Prince William inspired me to write on this blog again. Please read this quote for context:

The prince, 34, who was 15 when his mother Princess Diana died in Paris, said: “The shock is the biggest thing, and I still feel it 20 years later about my mother.
“People think shock can’t last that long, but it does. It’s such an unbelievably big moment in your life and it never leaves you, you just learn to deal with it.”

I’ve written a few posts in the past few weeks but they are bone stabbing kind of deep. I don’t think they are ready for the Internet yet. But I think this is medium deep, haha! So it seems more appropriate. I watched this interview today with Prince William talking about the death of his mother—I bet we all remember this day. It made me realize more people experience the same losses as our own than we probably care to understand. It’s easy to think we are the only one that may have gone through a particular thing. But loss is universal, and the loss of a parent at a young age does actually happen to lots of other people. And it also does happen to other chronically ill people. I’m not the only person with CF to lose their mom to cancer. The thing is it’s all tragic of course, but it’s a punch in the gut on top of 100 other punches. What else can you do besides take it?

But the loss of a parent, especially a mother, is unlike anything else. It’s not like losing anyone else in your life. I came into this world attached to only one person, by an umbilical cord, by months together, by experiences in the past and promises of the future, and I felt it all violently ripped away from me when she wasn’t here anymore. (I am not diminishing people raised by someone other than their birth mom.)   

I think people assume I lost my mom so many years ago it must be behind me. And it's not. I don't talk about it with too many people but I'm still gutted by it every day. There are so many things that happen every day that compound her loss, from tiny to monumental, from crisis to joy. I've just learned to live my life with this gaping hole. And it's okay. You learn to adapt. That's what life is mostly about—adapting to anything that comes at you. The only real way to survive in almost any capacity is to adapt. And adapting doesn’t mean that things can go back to the way they used to be. It just means learning to move forward in a new way, in a new vehicle, or on a new path. And if you are lucky enough you have people that will follow along side of you.

Memorial Day Weekend...

Yeah clearly this post is late! But I didn't want to forget to post about how my friends made it a great weekend!

I got to hang out with Lindsey all day Friday, and it was great -- this included porch time, crab cakes, and ice cream!

And Laura and Abe came over and spent the night Sunday.  Literally all we did was eat.  First we started with cheeseburgers, which Abe so nicely grilled for us.  And chicken wings, oh and baked beans! (Guys Bush' baked beans are really really good and like no work involved just a note.)  After we ate they noticed one of the jetskis floating away so they hopped in the lake and saved it! They proceeded to go for a ride, but little did we know the jetskis needed new spark plugs...I think they had fun sitting on it though.  Next time they might graduate to going for a ride...

I think we even might have taken some kind of quasi nap before it became time for lobsters and Korean style BBQ! (A treat, I've never had it!) I cooked the lobsters myself which always makes me a little sad.  I gave them a little back rub before they went in the pot. 

Abe graciously cooked the pork belly and short ribs which were delicioussssss! With rice and lots of little sides that go with Korean BBQ! Somehow even after we were in a food coma with BBQ and butter we ate some of Laura's homemade cupcakes.  I just remember somehow being in bed, I was in a food coma!

The next day I had a real surprise for them and I brought them to Carl's in Oxord, MA where when you order a side of sausage you get 7 links of sausage! I had a GIANT stack of blueberry pancakes! Abe had an omelet the size of my head and finished it all, like he should have gotten a free shirt or something seriously! It was an amazing feat! And Laura had 

It was a very enjoyable weekend of friends and food! Food = love.   Next time they come, not only will food be flowing, but the scorpion bowl experience happens...