Reasons I Love My Mother

Reason #355:

Today would have been my mom’s 50th birthday.

I almost don’t know what to say; I keep wanting today’s reason to be “EVERYTHING!”, but that would defeat the point of this project.

I love that I feel like I still have a relationship with her. People told me this would happen and I thought they were just being nice or precious or were maybe just more religious or spiritual than I could ever be. But it’s true; I do still feel very much like she’s here and alive, and I think that is a testament not to my religious beliefs, but to the impact she made on my life. I have literally talked out loud to her to tell her about my day on many occasions. I have asked her questions aloud, waited for an answer, then asked her another question, as if she had answered the first. What am I doing when I do this? It’s silly, and I know it’s silly in the moment, but I do it anyway. Because it’s sort of been working.

When I’m sad, I can still hear exactly what she would say to make me feel better. When someone does something dumb, I can practically see her face finding mine so that we can quietly laugh about it. The other day I was watching a TV show and thought, “Oh god, I bet my mom HATED this show. I would love to have heard what she had to say about it”, but then remembered she had passed away before it even began airing. I mess up my timelines and forget what she was here for and what she wasn’t because sometimes it really does feel like I talked to her yesterday.

Those moments help balance the moments of realization I have that never, NEVER will I see her alive again. Not ever, no matter how long I wait.

Those are toughies.

So today is her birthday. It would have been her 50th. We’re all going to take a sauna in an hour, something she loved to do. We’re going to stay in there as long as we can and then run and jump in the lake. When we tire of that, we’ll come back to her parents’ cabin on Lake May and have a dinner of her favorite foods in the house that she loved. My Uncle Dave may or may not put in his fake hillbilly teeth and mess with people at some point. My Grandpa will surely tell stories about when my mom was a kid; a third of them true, a third exaggerated, and a third completely made-up on the spot.

It’s probably the same night that would be happening if she were alive. And I like that.

Yikes. Today’s a sad one.