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.
