My moms hands

As a child I was pretty quiet, I loved being alone and I loved listening to stories, I loved having books read to me and I loved listening to adults talk about their life. I’m still very much like this, but I have found I also have things to share, for the most part my sharing is for my kids. I lost my mom before they were able to know her so I share her with them so they feel like they have a picture of who she was. This sharing has been a joy for me, talking about my mom with them has actually allowed things I had forgotten to return, things that had perhaps been buried beneath the grief of losing her.

I loved my moms hands. I remember sitting behind her in the car as a child and just observing her, and she would reach her hand back and hold mine. I always felt like my mom knew I needed that extra bit of reassurance, that I was loved and seen. I miss that about my relationship with my mother, someone knowing me, seeing when I struggle and reaching out a hand without me having to say a word. My husband of course supports me and loves me, I’m not saying I don’t feel loved in life, I just miss her and they way I was known by her. My mom carried me, my childhood, saw me through years of change, through the challenges of being a teenager, and then watched as I found love and started a family of my own. This past little while I have remembered the last bit of time with her. A month before she passed away she told our family she wanted to stop treatment, I began to grieve at that moment. Even early on in my moms sickness I felt that the journey with her would not be a long one, it was like my mom slowed down and took life in in a different way, and I felt it, like time was short, it struck sadness and fear in me early on, and as the time approached it made me grieve even before she left.

I talked to my mom every night on the phone, I had my first baby and my mom wanted to take in every detail, often the conversations were long. The final phone conversation I had with her was like a bad dream, she didn’t know who I was, and she kept saying goodbye. I decided I needed to see her, and so my husband brought me to her and it was very apparent that things were happening very quickly. I stayed with her and soon after my older siblings arrived as well and we prepared to say goodbye to her. The hardest thing for me to see after she was gone were her hands, hands that were once so full of life, hands that had held my baby, hands that had comforted me. As I grow older I notice my hands are so much like my mothers, I’m even getting the age spots she had, and I’m also more and more aware of how precious time is. My kids are growing, soon leaving, and every moment I get to chat with them, hug them and laugh with them around our table is time I hold close. There are a million things I could invest my time in and some of it may be good, but I know time is the most precious thing I can give to those I love, it is the lesson I take from my relationship with my mother.