Mothers. Smiles. Tears.

Mother's Day is not supposed to end with tears, is it? Yet here I sit, covered in them. All it took was a picture - oh, and a lifetime of memories and emotions, things I'm learning not many people truly understand.

I. need. my. mom. I'm 34 years old and yes, I still need my mom. Problem is the closest I can get to talking to her is that damned picture. The one where I'm dressed in white and we have our arms around each other and those kind of smiles you just can't stop no matter how hard you try - yeah, that picture. It was taken about two and a half years ago, just before I married a really great guy. It was taken about one year before my mother was taken from me and so many others.

Others like my little girl who will never truly know how much was taken from her, the "Oma" she missed meeting by two days. It is by far the sharpest pain I know, my little girl not having my mother, and I'm still amazed that pain doesn't kill me. I guess I'm glad Georgia will never know the true extent of the loss, that way she'll never know the pain.

Others like my mom's best friend who started her Facebook page on October 2, 2009, to keep in touch with my mother. On October 11th, my mom was gone. That friend hasn't touched her Facebook page again until today, one and a half years later. I guess I'm not the only one still hurting.

The hurt is especially hard on days like today, because don't I owe it to my daughter to be 100% happy and all into this special day? Doesn't she deserve to have a mommy who is loving the day for all the love it celebrates instead of one who is choking down the day one breath at a time? Doesn't she deserve a mom who is 100% enjoying the magical dinner (and it was) at a cozy Italian restaurant instead of a mom who keeps glancing at the surrounding tables, angry and mad that other women have their moms there? Doesn't my daughter deserve a mom who can focus - focus on her and her love and her gifts and her time and her memories made on a day like this? And a mom who can just write warm, lovey-dovey, happy, fuzzy, dancing teddy bears posts for Mother's Day?

Maybe she did sense something though. Do your Mother's Day pictures look like these?



And my dear husband - he doesn't realize the bubbling inferno he's walking into sometimes when these "mom" emotions are boiling (sorry). I don't think he'll ever understand the raw emotion and anger this loss brings to the surface, but how could he? How could anyone who hasn't faced this, this - OMG, does it even have words or bear description? Perhaps Hell... trapped inside a really nice life. Because trust me, take away this one detail and my life is fabulous. It is really, truly great... and wonderful... and happy.

So why the anger? How long will it last? When will Mother's Day just be Mother's Day again? Why the moments where I just want to scream and slam this laptop into the wall? Why can't I still watch a freakin' Hallmark commercial without breaking down? Why the love/hate relationship with God? Why this intensely deep hole of loss and pain and nothing that some days threatens to literally make me disappear? Why can the loss of one single person - ONE PERSON - have such a profound and unexplainable impact on almost every moment of my life from here on out? One word - mother. It's why a mom is special enough to get this day. The bond is permanent, and it ain't going anywhere. Sure, we all might feel it and express it to a different magnitude, but look inside you and it's still there. It's the same bond my daughter and I now share and why she runs to me with a card clutched between her hands, so happy to hand over those simple words - Happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day... Happy Mother's Day... Happy Mother's Day - it is happy, isn't it? 99% of me knows it is.

Thank you Georgia, and thank you honey, for my Happy Mother's Day.