Faith & Roses

I have allowed myself to receive a painful truth: I miss my mother. It’s painful. I am mourning the loss of someone who is still alive. A loss of conversation; doing things together and having shared experiences; getting her perspective on things; sharing in her large knowledge of practical living; her delicious cooking; her physical energy; her “piss and vinegar!” Her independence and her ability to take care of herself on so many levels.

And the ball moves from the court of my loss, always, to the court of her loss. And I can become overwhelmed by deep sadness as I try to imagine how she is experiencing her losses. And experience them she does, I am pretty sure.

I don’t put the two of us too far into the future. My only steadfast prayer request for her is that she is spared from a nursing home. And then I drop all thoughts like they are too hot for me to hold. Denial? Well if it is denial, I see value, necessity and Grace in it. I tell myself that I’ll be there for whatever may come. Yet somehow I refuse to think about this seemingly very possible reality because it’s just too big to imagine and the pain of it that would surely come scares me to my core.