I really tried today to have a brighter mindset. Riding my bike this morning, I tried to find the freezing cold weather and harsh wind out of the NE as a way of bringing my Mom closer. She used to say that all of the cycling in the rain and wind is what made her tough. I tried to use that wisdom this morning to keep missing her at bay. Not particularly successful.

By the time that I got to the classroom, there was just no salvaging it. Today was going to be hard and I wasn’t going to be able to get away from the feeling of missing her and still being sorry that she is gone. And yeah, still feeling angry – too early. I wasn’t ready not to have my Mom at my side anymore. Or more realistically, standing behind me and giving me a swift kick.

The thing I want to yell most is “IT’S NOT FAIR.” It’s not and it won’t ever be. That doesn’t make me unique, it makes me one of the billions of people who have lost someone that they loved. It makes me mad that there are so many things I didn’t get to share with her, all of the energy and determination she had that didn’t get to start as many shitstorms as she had a right to and a capacity for and that sometimes I think that all of my strength is not my own but came from my mother.

It’s that last one that I have spent a lot of time with today. I know that the wild and stubborn will of my mother is within me. As is the anxiety and the fear that I am not doing enough. But how do you know that you will have enough endurance to keep going?

When I think about her life and all of the things that she experienced, I wonder if I would also have had that strength? Would I have made it through like she did? Would I have continued to be myself and not fade away into some type of people pleaser? Because if there was one thing my Mom was not, it was a people pleaser!

I can try to wrap it up in sentences, to see if I can make sense of what I am feeling. The reality is I know what I am feeling. Today, when we should have been going somewhere to eat really good Mexican food and drink a margarita, I am instead missing her deeply. I’d like to say “Happy Birthday, Mom” and have her look at me over the top of her glass with that spark of mischief in her eye.