Momma

Tonight, I miss my Mother. I miss her very much.

I can see so many things in my mind. Her eyes weren't a boring, old hazel. They were green with streaks of gold in them. I know this because when I was little and she'd hold me in her lap, I would stare really hard at them. They were exotic looking. Her hands were small. Her fingers were long and slender with fingernails shaped just like mine. Maggie's are a lot like them. But her skin was very white with freckles. I can see the way she formed her mouth when she talked. Her top lip was smaller than mine. My lips are like my Dad's.

I was in a store the other day and I smelled her. Smell is a powerful thing. In that moment, when I closed my eyes, I could hear her heart beating under my ear. Just like when I was a little girl and I would lay in her lap at night while she watched MASH. I would lay there with my eyes closed and let the smell of her powder and perfume surround me. And I can hear her humming while she played with my hair. She had a very pretty voice, kind of low. And she would hum and then stop and breathe in really deeply through her nose so she could hum longer. I loved that. I have a cassette tape of her singing. I can't listen to it though, it makes my heart hurt.

A part of me is gone from this Earth. It is a part of me that my children will never know. I have little mannerisms like her that only my Dad and sister can recognize. I have to teach Brody to say "Bubbe" by pointing to a picture. He has no idea who she is. There will be events in my childhood that will always be fuzzy because I have no Mother to clarify them. No Mother to tell me whose house we used to go to that had a giant dalmation, things like that.

Why did she have to die? Why did she have to leave me years before she died? I know some will spout trite phrases at my pain, but it's not enough. It will never be enough. I knew that she was going to die. That there was no way around it. I knew things would never get better, couldn't get better. But I still loved her, missed her. I think now I'm passed the grieving over what she was at the end, what she lived in. But I will always miss my Momma. I will always long for her to be there.

The only comfort I have is that God is sovereign. God is good. And God loves me. God loves my Momma. I cling to that more tightly than I ever have to anything else. He never left her. And only he knows my heart and my pain. He weeps with me as I weep now.

And in the voice of a Chris Rice song, 'And with her final heartbeat, she kissed this world good-bye and went in peace and danced on Glory's side'. And now she sits in His lap and hears His heartbeat. And she knows that I love her. And that I always have. Always will.