Enough

In five days, it will be 11 months since my mom died. I've been motherless for nearly a year. 

As with many other truly difficult things in my life, it hasn't gotten easier, but it's gotten less hard...most days.

On the good days, I can answer someone who compliments my dead mother's purse with a simple, "Thank you," instead of having to tell them it was hers.

On the hard days, I tear up because I can't text her about the 45-minute conversation I had with my son about "anvelopes" and how they can have "one deer baby in their lives, just one, because that's all that God will allow. After that, they only have anvelopes." And by conversation, I mean that he told me about this great discovery of his for 45-minutes straight.  And I didn't get to tell her about it and laugh, and laugh.

On the really hard days, I face a complicated blend of joy and sadness.  I felt it when my son actually performed at his holiday performance.  He has a history of...not performing.  And there he was, after waiting patiently for over an hour for his class to perform, up on the stage, singing, and doing the gestures, and smiling. 

And she didn't get to see it.  

This year has been painful, joyous, nourishing, incredible. It has been a year in a life.

I've let a lot go.

Side gigs and small businesses.  The Facebook App. "Building a Brand" (whatever that even means, anymore). 

I've realized where my focus should rest.

I keep focusing on nourishing myself, body, spirit, and soul.  I dedicate time to my mental and physical health. With distractions aside, I've become (or hope I have become...or am in the process of becoming) a better wife, mother, daughter, and friend.

I have realized a lot of what I am not.

I am not the writer who can tune in daily or twice a week, or...on any regular schedule.

I am not the writer who refers back to old journals. In fact, a couple of months ago, I took a bag of my adolescent journals and had them shredded.  I let it all go.

Along the way, I've learned a bit more about what I am.

I am the writer who writes, in my mind, at 3 a.m., awake in my bed, often snuggling the five-year-old who has more or less sneaked in. 

I am the writer who has forgotten most of the writing by the time I wake up.

I am the writer who writes in my head, as a meditation, as a prayer. And by the time I've woken, I've bled myself dry.

I give what I can, when I can. And that will have to be enough.

It's been a strange 11 months.  I don't know what Mama would think of how I've handled it. 

I hope she would say that I am enough.