A Brighter Day

Today is just that, a brighter day. Not outside. Outside it's still a weird Michigan winter. But inside my head it's brighter. The world isn't all doom, gloom and grief. It's a place where I'm having a better, brighter day.

I know that kind of sounds Mary Sunshine-ish. And the answer to your question is NO, I am not taking any kind of mood altering drugs. Although, I wish. I could use a big old bottle of xanax most days. But I'm not. It's me, unaltered good old me. And I do feel like me today. For the first time in weeks I'm feeling like me.

Not the old me, the new me. Ha, I knew I could confuse all of you. I said something to Steve right after my mom died in a fit of cries late one night. I wasn't only mourning for my mother. I was mourning me. The me I was that night before the phone rang. The me who tragedy had only flirted with before, never had a full out date or relationship with.

But that night I lost my mom I also lost part of myself. Or so I thought. So I lamented to my husband. "I'll never be the person I was before this happened."

And that's true and a lie at the same time. I am that person and I'm not. I'm a version of that person who grew up and matured in the blink of an eye. Nothing makes you grow up faster than sitting around a funeral home conference table with seven other sets of eyes staring at you and expecting you to lead the pack to the right choices for your mother's funeral . Nothing makes you grow older by the minute than watching your own grandmother cry over her daughter's body and knowing that nothing you can do can take that hurt from her heart. Nothing makes you grow older faster than holding your own baby girl and explaining to her that Grandma went to sleep and didn't wake up.

And all of those things happened to me and more. I don't intend to turn this blog into the "dead mother chronicles". But it's what I'm feeling and what I'm writing about right now, today. Rawness and grief. Mourning and love. Good and better. Not bad and good. No more. Not for me. My days I've decided are going to be good and better. Today is one of the brighter ones.

I must make the disclaimer. I reserve the right to grieve at any time. I don't give myself a timeline for this grief. I expect it will be a lifetime of missing my mother. She was my mother, I can't imagine thinking differently. But I'm hoping that my days will become better and better as I get used to traveling through life without her. But I refuse to monopolize this grief and isolate myself within it. It will not settle in my soul and make me a bitter person. It can visit, say hello, and then say goodbye. I will enjoy what I have and not get sucked down into what I had to do without.