I miss my Mom ... alot!I think it might be compared to the phantom limb people experience when they lose a limb. I keep having this feeling I need to go in to check on her, or I need to turn the TV down as she is napping, or I need to keep my voice down as I walk by her room.
This is the first time I have ever wished her room had not been the master bedroom because had it been just another room I could shut the door and sort through her stuff later ... much later! When I go into her room now I am weighted down in the shoulders, I cannot bring myself to make any changes because I feel like she might think I am discarding her and her memory. But I also believe that when people go to Heaven they do not think about us like that. They are in a joyous place and I believe that all of the pain and strife going on in this world is not conducive to a Heavenly experience and so God does not allow them to have an awareness of those things. So I guess it is the her I carry in my heart that I worry about offending.
And why do I miss her, honestly I really believed I was going to be stoic, rejoicing in her being able to start a new journey, so happy, so at peace. I was not going to be a whiney butt, going around feeling like woe is me. But I miss her eyes, the way she would stare at me so intently, trying so hard to get her message across. Sometimes I got it ... sometimes she was using expression to show annoyance, but that was rare, usually it looked like sincere gratitude, or sometimes love, or sometimes I think she was saying she was very proud of me, or sometimes it was a very apologetic look if she felt like she had hurt my feelings, or sometimes it was that look that said she was on my side no matter what when I cried because I felt like I was failing her in my efforts to learn.
I think my Mom and I "talked" more in the last 2 yrs than we talked in my whole life. I am so thankful for the gift of taking care of her!
I miss her soft hands, her periodic moments of sarcastic wit, her smile, her way of letting it be known what she liked or did not like without apology.
And maybe I also miss her because she was my sense of purpose, the reason I woke up, I am in a funk. I am more bothered by this "empty nestiness" than I was when the kids left. I am sure it will be better every day ... the bedroom door is closed and eventually I will get to it!
My friend Lynn, when I told her of your mom passing, told me about a friend of hers who also cared for her mother who had Alzheimer's and that when she passed she was surprised by feeling like she did not know what to do with herself anymore, the constant struggle to keep everything routine had penetrated her life and now she missed that routine. Anyway, I expressed to Lynn thankfulness for sharing that with me because it would be easy for us to think that, okay, now Bev can get back to her life and do what she wants when she wants to do it, go where she wants and take as much time as she likes....etc...and I had not thought of this side of it until then. I just want you to know I am praying for you and especially keeping you lifted up in the days, weeks, months ahead as you find your new "normal" and adjust and it will take as long as it takes so you should not feel that you have to rush it, that you should be doing this or doing that or not doing this or not doing that...you have blessed so many because you showed how God can make a blessing out of any situation and you shared it with us. Much love, Bev and a BIG HUG!!!!! Angela McManus
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