Slice of Life choices for the week of August 10, 2008 are:
1. A Lesson Learned in My Youth
2. A Flight of Fancy
3. Writer’s Choice - You may choose to write about anything that has happened or is happening in your life that you feel moved to share.
I am again this week choosing #3 and I picked a post I wrote in 2006 about my grandmother and my mother.
Today is April 8th. April 8th is the same and different for me every year. Sometimes it is just a normal melancholy day and othertimes it is 1978 or oddly enough 1991. You see, today my mother is dead 28 years and my grandmother (father's mother) 15 years. If that is not strange enough; my mother and my grandmother not only share a death date but..they share a birthdate. Double whammy. Mom died when I was 11 It was scary, hard, lonely, weird, and sad. I think about everything I went through as a 11year old with a dying mother and feel so bad for my 11year old self. I wish I could just hold my little 11year old self and tell her that everything is going to be ok.
I wish I knew more about my Mom. I am constantly making sure that I leave my little ones a legacy. I want them to know who I am. I spent so many years trying to gather information on my mom. I wanted to speak to people who knew her. Not as a daughter, a sister, a wife but as a women. I would give anything to sit and talk with Diane the women, not my mother! I would also love to know what she thinks of who I am now! Is she proud of who I have become? Does she think I am a good mom? A good person? A good women! It is so weird to think that this year I will be turning 40 in August. My mother never reached 34. I will forever be older than my mother. I cannot imagine what it would have been like to have three daughters, an 11 year old, a 10 year old and an 8 year old and then be told that you are terminally ill and would leave them.
After mom died we eventually moved in with my Grandmother. Grandma was a frail, scared women. She was caring and funny but so scared of everything. She had bulimia her whole life and I believe that she knew that my grandfather was molesting me. I remember her walking in one time and walking right back out. I don't hold it against her I think that she was to scared to do anything about it. She took in me and my two sisters and did the best that she could. When I was told that she was gone I remember sinking to the floor and crying my eyes out. Why! Two important women in my life gone forever.
I hope that I have done them both proud. I hope they knew that I think of them everyday and that I am so sad that my babies will never get to know them. I wish I could call my mother whenever Jesse does something cute or call her and say I need a break could you please come hold Skye for a while she is driving me crazy. (btw here she comes now crying at my feet - God help me).
Mommy and Grandma you are the spirit in me! I love and miss you!
Maria, I am so sorry you lost your mother at such a young age. My mother and I had a very difficult relationship but regardless I did love her. My heart broke when I read about your grandfather. I was molested as a child by an uncle so I know the pain you endured then and now. You have become a strong woman despite the obstacles in your life. I am sure bothe your mother and grandmother are proud of you.
ReplyDeleteI had my mom until I was 45. Both my grandmothers were a big part of my life and I had them until I was well into adulthood and had children of my own. Three beautiful women, three wonderful examples of what I wanted to be, three that I still miss after all these years!
ReplyDeleteCricket, Thank you for sharing your story. I appreciate your kind words.
ReplyDeleteEve, It is something you never get over no matter how old u were or how many years they are gone. I am sorry for your loses.
I wrote my first slice of life story this week, so the photo on your blog caught my attention and I stopped to read.
ReplyDeleteMy mother died when I was three. As I grew up everyone I knew told me wonderful things about her. She was beautiful, the best cook in the world, she sang like an angel, she wrote beautiful poetry and prose, she painted ... as far as I knew, my mother was perfect.
I spent most of my awkward, unlovely, teen years certain it was good that she was gone so she wouldn't have to be saddled with a disappointment like me. I tried so hard to be all the things she was. Mostly (in my opinion) I failed.
I have learned that we rarely recognize our own beauty. I am a good cook, but I won't be hosting any cooing shows. I can't paint a wall, so a portrait is out of the question. I write poetry and people seem to like it. I have had a few short stories published.
I think my mother would be proud of me, as I think your mother would be proud of you. I think this in part because that is the way mothers are, but mostly I think this because of the other people who respect us.