Just Another January Sunday

Last January, I stood in my art room for days on end painting a portrait of my mother. It’s  a school photo taken the year she met my father for the first time… She was only fifteen.

Try as I did, I could never get her eyes right, her eyes were haunting things, all hazel green and blue and dark around the edges. They were full of pain and full of hope all at the same time. 

Yesterday I spoiled my three daughters. We went to the gym and worked really hard. We ate chinese noodles from boxes and shopped for dresses. We went to IHOP for a pancake dinner to make up for any good that we might have done at the gym. I got in bed, exhausted and happy and I cried myself to sleep. I must have cried intermittently all night long because when I woke in the morning I was still crying and my eyes were swollen and sore.

Just another January Sunday. Mom took her own life on a day just like today.

A woman at church wanted me to know she had read my book, “A Promise of Hope” in 36 hours flat. Then she congratulated Dana for staying with me because any man she knows would have left for certain! She’s right. Another woman approached. Another new reader asking when my mother was born…wow, they’re just a year apart, she could have been my mother… I smiled, but as I felt her hand on my shoulder, I wished she would hold me.

I miss my mother.

But more than me missing her, I’ll bet she misses living…

She’s missed a lot:

She missed 8 of her children’s weddings.

She missed the birth of 25 grandchildren (and another on the way).

She’s missed graduations and celebrations and 18 Christmas Eves. Christmas Eve was her favorite.

And the sunsets…She’s missed all the sunsets.

I’m not crying about suicide anymore. I stopped crying about suicide when her story started saving lives. I’m just crying for the loss of potential. For all the times we will never sound the same while laughing over simple things. For all of the times I will never stir a pot in her kitchen. For all the ways she will never know my daughters or be proud of my son.

Sundays in January still sting because we are all here, moving on without her.