Mom

Last week was the saddest week of my life. Burying Mom was harder than I could imagine.

Seeing the utter grief on my six-year-old nephew’s face made my heart break all over again. Watching Garrett walk into Mom’s office to find her was hard.

After seeing her both Wednesday evening and Thursday during the funeral, he recognized that she was in the coffin, and his reaction to its being lowered was nearly too much. Not knowing what to tell a toddler – saying that grandma had gone home would only cause him to look for her once we were back at my parent’s house – I told him that grandma had gone bye-bye.

So now, when he goes into her office and starts to ask for grandma, he remembers and amends his question to “grandma, bye”. The day he stops asking about Grandma will be a sad day indeed.

Perhaps one of my biggest regrets so far is that I don’t have any pictures of Grandma holding Garrett. Pictures are something we sent to Grandma, and it never occurred to me to make a point of recording her interaction with Garrett. I’m hopeful that as I continue to go through hard drives, I’ll find something that survived last year’s computer crash. In the meantime, I did find this video of mom holding Garrett when he was just over two months old. She’s not in it exactly, but she’s there talking to him.

The day after the funeral, I was thinking about planting flowers at the grave for Mother’s Day, and as soon as the phrase “mom’s grave” went through my mind, I was glad that I was alone in the house. For a while, I just sat on my bed and cried.

Gabriel has been amazing. I know that he’s grieving too and that being there, trying to perform CPR on Mom that night wasn’t easy, but he’s been so kind and patient and lets me babble his ears off.

I realize that this is somewhat rambling and disjointed, and I apologize. But I wanted you to know that despite what I wrote last week, it is hard. Unimaginably hard.

I’m so glad that our Father in heaven knows what he’s doing and that I can rest in that.

Thank you all so much for your kind words and the notes you took the time to send me. Your thoughts and prayers are very much appreciated.

I look forward to getting back to regular blogging – hopefully tomorrow.

Blessings, Elise