dear mom (10 years later) ...

Today is 10 years since I last saw you and I just thought I'd share some things with you, that you may or may not already know. First, I just want to say how much I miss you - so much that it aches sometimes in places I never knew I had within me. I catch myself thinking about you or looking at the picture of you and me together that I keep on my dresser and struggle with the fact that 10 years have gone since I heard your voice or felt your touch or soaked in your laughter. It doesn't seem possible.

I find myself thinking lately about how much I regret. I regret the days I was too hard on you or caused you any pain in my defiance. I regret the time I wasted doing other foolish things when if I'd known you were leaving so soon, I would have spent them getting to know you and talking to you and listening to you. I would have spent more time memorizing you: the laugh lines in your face; the way you moved; your laugh when you found something really funny; how you suffered so much but never complained, taking each day in stride and living out your name - Faith; how you looked sitting at the piano every morning playing Fur Elise; or the joy you took in the simpler things. Forcing myself now to think back I can almost hear you but the more I try to remember the more the image fades from memory - like a dream when you first wake up. It makes me sad that I can't remember these things in much detail anymore. I kick myself for not paying more careful attention back then to the things I would 10 years later find more important. "Hindsight's 20/20," I imagine you saying now. And I know you don't hold any of this against me now, nor did you even then. It's just the way I feel and I suppose I need to someday reach the point where I can release myself from that and offer forgiveness to the girl I was back then.

I have healed in so many ways over the last several years (the last few especially - even the last ONE) from the wounds of a particularly painful childhood. Dad and I have a relationship that I never imagined possible for him and me. I suppose something shifted that day we watched you draw your last breath and being the only two in the room with you. We have done a lot of hard work through the grace of God and his work in us that has offered me much hope and comfort. We continue to grow and learn from each other and about each other, offering the other grace and forgiveness when one of us has unintentionally hurt the other, which happens much less frequently now than ever before.

I am learning so much about myself, about our family and its dynamics in my life, about God and grace, through careful and honest introspection and through relationships with trusted confidants that have permission to draw my attention to those things in my life that need some extra medicine. This group of people, a few women and dad, has been extraordinary and cathartic for my growth. I am so very thankful for their presence in my life and for taking on a role that I can only imagine would have been filled by you if you were still with me.

One thing I'm learning through various avenues is that I have become quite adept over the years at defending myself as a way of protecting myself. It has occurred to me that during my most formative years I did not have what I would call a protector, one to protect me from the world and from the lies its prince would sow and nurture in me. Dad wasn't a protector and you weren't a protector because you were trying to protect yourself. I get that, I really do. At least I get it now. But I remember countless nights crying myself to sleep wishing you would leave him and take us with you. Protect us. Be pro-active. Protect yourself better. Stand up for me. Stand up for them and for yourself. Use your voice. I prayed that you would leave him. When it became clear that you wouldn't, I used my own devices to protect myself that has left me defensive and scared in a lot of situations. Having learned from you I stayed in various abusive relationships of my own, not really knowing any other way.

Again, looking back now I am so thankful that you stayed. I know your last few years of marriage were some of your best and it's those years that I remember the most fondly. You and dad taught me so much about love and conflict (how to do them and how not to do them) by sticking it out that are invaluable lessons that likely I would not have learned had you thrown in the towel. And I can't imagine how my life would be different now had you done that. But I have to be honest here in a way I never have before and while I have certainly thought it several times over the last several years, I don't think I have ever said this out loud before. I was so angry with you over those things though I am not sure I was willing to see it and name it until now. But I think I've come to the place where I absolutely have to let go of that or it will tear me apart. I have spent the better part of the last 10 years feeling guilty for feeling that way towards you, like I was somehow dishonoring you even in death. Even now I struggle to write these words or to bring them out into the open. But hanging onto that won't bring me healing or freedom. So in an effort to bring this into the light, to finally give a voice to something has been a thorn in my side for 30+ years, and with anxious expectation that releasing you from this will also release me and bring me into a more abundant freedom: I forgive you. I forgive you for not protecting me and I forgive you for oftentimes making Dad "the bad guy."

Not only that but I also seek forgiveness. The Trinity is and has always been my Defender and I am sorry that I tried to cast you in a role that had already been filled. I am so sorry for any pain I caused you, and I know it must have been great at times. My anger and fear manifested themselves in many unhealthy ways. I don't offer that as an excuse or a means to justify behaviors I wish I could take back. Instead I offer that as a confession. I suppose many experts would say that every child or teenager goes through a period of particular defiance or rebellion and maybe they're right. I just know what I remember and most of it isn't pleasant. I wish I could remember more of the good because I know there must have been more of the good stuff than the bad. I'm not sure why my mind has chosen to remember the bad and not more good when most times you hear of people repressing the bad. I have to leave all of this at the foot of the cross for him to take and make something beautiful of it. And I am choosing to believe that he can do what he says he can do.

How I wish you were here to have an adult mother-daughter relationship with me. I expect we would meet for coffee regularly and I could tell you all the other ways I am changing and growing and becoming more and more myself, who I was created to be. There's so much I could and want to share with you and find out about you, we could sit for hours and talk if you were here. The Refiner's Fire burns hot these days but I am so thankful for it in a way. It's opened doors to beautiful new friendships and deepening older ones. I am so blessed by my friends and have a few with whom I share a special bond: we all know what it it feels like to grieve the loss of a mother too early, we know a little of what one of us might be feeling as we look back with our minds' eye to times that were simpler, and if not safer, then at least more innocent, times that found us in the arms of our mothers. Even though I may not see those friends as often as I truly would like, I can't deny that those bonds are some of the sweetest I possess. We often like to imagine out loud that our moms are all friends up there in Heaven watching us down here, interceding for us, grieving for us when mistakes we make bring loss in one form or another, and laughing with us when life enraptures us. How I wish that you were here and that their moms were all here and we could all go out for dinner together.

I wish for that and yet I know that can't happen and probably wouldn't have happened if you were all still alive. I am thankful for the rich and wonderful blessings your passing has afforded me. I long for you but can profoundly sense that my life would not be as rich. I imagine Dad and I wouldn't be as close as we are today. Some of the friends I share such special bonds with probably would not be as special to me, if we were even friends at all. Who knows in what other ways my life might have been less rich. While I miss you with every fiber of my being, I can't help but think that if you were here, would I be somehow missing these things that have brought so much beauty to my life because of your absence. Would that be the loss I was grieving today? I imagine so.

I love you, Mom. I miss you. Please give Becky, Debbie and Carolyn a hug and thank them for me when you see them and have a glass of wine together.

And for Becky, Debbie and Carolyn: Thank you so much for giving life to your girls and for setting them on a path that would one day lead them to collide with mine in ways that would affect my life for the better. Your respective daughters all mean the world to me and am so blessed by their presence in my life and can't help but think that this life would be less without them. You raised them well and beautifully and I can't help but imagine you teaching them all the grace and acceptance that they have shown to me in various ways. I wish I'd had the privilege of knowing you all before your passing but am content with knowing your girls and, in a way, knowing you through them. They continue to teach me about grace, love and beauty - lessons I'm sure they learned, in part if not in whole, from you. I look forward to the day when we can all, daughters and mothers, be together and laugh and share and have a glass of wine together. Until then, give my mom a hug when she comes to you. Thank you!