One year ago I posted on WanaTribe the below. Though the pain has receded and we are coming to accept the losses, we still miss them.
Missing you
What does ‘missing you’ mean? My wife would say it means not being able to make the call to her Mother when she has a concern. Or when she wants to brag on one of her seven grandchildren. Or being able to take a vacation and sit together talking about the cares and joys of life. They talked almost daily for the last 30 years. Daily life will never be the same for her since her mother passed Feb 2016.
My wife would say it is not being able to go fishing with her brother. Or sit with him talking cars, guns, grandchildren, work, people they knew or hundreds of shared experiences growing up. He passed April 2016, about 10 weeks after her mother.
I sat with her today at the cemetery. We sat on a bench monument at the head of her brother’s grave. We overlooked her mother’s grave to the headstone for her parent’s. We shared stories but mostly I listened. When she cried, I tried to comfort her. I found myself tearing up.
The time came to leave. We stood, said goodbye to her brother and approached the parent’s headstone. My wife leaned over and rubbed the picture of her mother engraved there. “Happy birthday, Mom.”
It is cliché to say “They will never be gone as long as we hold them in our hearts.” The cliché is supposed to make us feel better. But it is a poor replacement for seeing the smile, hearing the laugh, or holding the loved one. It can only soothe the hurt in ‘missing you.”
Me, it has been twenty years since my mother passed. I lost two brothers and my father between October 2002 and October 2003. My sister passed in 2011. Some days, when I am experiencing a success I find myself reaching for the phone to share it with my mother. To this day, ‘missing you’ touches me.
May they all rest in peace knowing we are “missing you.”
Are you missing someone? Tell me about them.
I do feel that we keep our loved ones alive by keeping them in our hearts, our memories, our stories, our pictures and recipes. All of those things and others. But, it can offer small solace to one who is grieving from a loss. I think it’s so important to allow people time to grieve, time to feel the pain and work through it. Even ourselves, we have to be kind to ourselves when we experience a loss.
Then, as time passes and we can breathe again, then we can understand what it means to keep somebody alive in our hearts, that this is the new way we live with them.
Thank you for your beautiful writing.
This is the time of year when my wife and I try to celebrate her family who passed on. We visit the cemetery in Texas which means a road trip for us from Maryland. It is convenient for us because her mother’s, father’s, and her brother’s birthday are all the same week. Also in that week is her parent’s anniversary. One short vacation allows us the opportunity to celebrate all of them. The rest of the year they are kept in our hearts and memories.
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