Posts Tagged ‘missing’

For the first time in… well, in my whole life, I am facing a birthday where I will have no parents.

No Mom and Dad coming into the bedroom first thing in the morning to smile and tell me that ‘x number of years ago, we got the best present of all’.

No Dad sitting in his chair, pissed off as hell at me because I’d stayed out all night drinking with my friends.  On my seventeenth birthday.

No Mom taking me to lunch and flicking stuff off of her fork just to make me laugh.

No cards with Mom’s loopy hand writing and Dad’s angular half-writing.

No Dad picking me up and taking me to a movie, just for the hell of it.

No birthday calls from Mom to wish me a happy day, the ones where Dad would break in on the extension half-way through the conversation to say the same thing and then they’d start talking to each other about who interrupted whom and how long the other was taking.

No Mom singing me “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.

No Dad singing his version of “When You Wish Upon a Star”.

No Mom.
No Dad.

I made it through Christmas.  I’ll make it though my birthday, too.
Because I’m fucking stubborn that way.
And because I’ll have help.

But how long until the hurt dulls a bit?  How long until I can smile at the memories and not have tears streaming down my face?  How fucking long before I can look at the picture of the two of them that I have on my shelf for more than three seconds without feeling the need to look away?

How long before I get a bit weepy for no reason that I can bring to mind, and then realize that something is happening, another first where they won’t be there, and it won’t still stab me?  How long before I can just think to myself, ‘it’s okay. you’re just missing Mom and Dad’ and it doesn’t hit me like a ton of fucking bricks?

And somebody, please tell me…

…how much longer will I have to keep not listening to those songs – especially the one Dad used to sing, because he sang it only on very special occasions – before they don’t rip me apart?  Before I can just listen and smile?

Someone, just please tell me that everything is going to be okay, and make me believe it?

Because the two people I need to tell me that right now?

They can’t.

hi mom;

saturday would have been your sixty-sixth birthday. i’m only saying it here because i know how much you would have been looking forward to it.

kind of like when i called you on your sixtieth and you hung up in my ear.

or like when you came up for coffee on your sixty-fifth and i wished you a happy birthday… and you told me to fuck the hell off.

heh.

and people wonder where i get my filthy mouth and bad attitude from.

i know you hated the thought of getting older, but you wore it well.

your beauty didn’t falter. not to me. to me, you only became more beautiful with each passing year. to me, as your body wasted, your spirit flourished. to me, you were always the most beautiful woman in the world.

and never more beautiful than when you smiled. i will remember that smile for the rest of my days. you didn’t smile with your mouth, you smiled with your heart. your laugh came from the very depths of your soul and when you laughed, you weren’t afraid to let anyone hear it.

i always envied that about you.

i know that the last months of your life were very hard on you; after dad died, you couldn’t find a whole lot of reasons to smile, or to laugh.

don’t worry mom.

it’s not the last few months that i’m going to remember.

already those memories have faded for me, and the memories of your laughter and light are replacing them. your smile lives on, and your laughter will ring in my head until my last breath.

when you left this shitty world, you left it in style. on your own terms, and on your own goddamn schedule. and fuck anyone that didn’t understand it, or didn’t agree with it. you died as you lived. in exactly the manner that you needed to, with people that loved you then, and love you still.

that last night, you were smiling.
and you were laughing.
you were beautiful.

thank you for your smile.
thank you for your laugh.

i’m getting better at letting mine out the way you did.

without shame.
without care.
without worry.
without reservation.

i’m getting there.

happy birthday, mom.

i love you.

tell dad i love him, too.