herlucidlife

The days leading up I think about how I’ll feel. I consider the emotions I may feel throughout the day. Will I be willing to socialize or will I hole up in my bubble. This year was a bubble moment. I want to sit in my own space. Time didn’t stand still but I did. God granted me a three day weekend to take care of myself. To sit with emotions, to sleep and rest. To move slow and think of you. Letting a couple friends know I wanted to be alone on the day of. I just needed to be. Pushing myself through the day, I go so hard to simply be healthy. There are days when I feel my body is more tired than it should be, more exhausted than needed. I keep going anyway. I needed the time. 

I think about you without actively giving a conscious effort. You no longer sit on my chest, it’s more like a hover. Most days I live through life unwavering. Healing took a toll, I never thought I would be so well adjusted at the nine year mark. Last year was hard and I cried in the bathroom at work, I couldn’t make it through the day. This year I want to eat. I want to keep shoveling in food but my body can’t take it. You died on a beautiful day in April. The sun was high in the blue sky, little white cotton like clouds floated effortless when God took your spirit. Body lifeless in the hospital bed, lips had begun to turn yellow. It’s wild how the body begins to die before the last breath is taken. 

I watched the effects of illness on your body but your spirit was the strongest I’d ever seen. Living folks didn’t have the strength you carried until the end. Perhaps scared, definitely uncomfortable and in pain, beyond my comprehension. You are soaring above it all now, healed living in the perfection God created you to live in. I don’t long for you as I used to. Somehow my pain went from grief to acceptance to sincerely enjoying the way my life is today. I don’t hold your death like a badge of honor but I do hold great love and admiration. There’s nothing more beautiful than your smile when I look back over the years. I see so much of myself in you mixed with the attributes I hold only from myself. 

Seven years of trying to kill myself after you died. For the last two years I’ve been learning how to live. Live with myself in a healthy way. Alive, I’m grateful to have called you my mother. Our relationship was more than special to me, my greatest friend, a world class mother. With your faults, you did the best by me. Cheering, disciplining, gut wrenching laughs. Till this day I have never laughed as hard as I have laughed with you in the bathroom, listening to the late night radio station doing each other’s hair. The memories are endless but the love will live free, priceless. Sometimes I choke back the tears while other times I let them fall. 

It’s crazy you’re not here, it’s even more mind blowing that I can’t imagine you in this world anymore. The way my life no longer fits you and the reality of who you were. The world is too unhinged to be able to call you a resident of this earth. It was time for you to be released into the heavens, above the clouds. You won! Devoted, faithful, loving and praising God even when your body was failing. You were obedient when it wasn’t convenient. My life ended and began when you took your last breath.