For My Mother
Mom,
For all the sad and good times, I still love you.
The tulip background is for the love of flowers and gardening you had, and the hummingbirds are for the love you had of them also.
I'm grateful I was sent back home to you when I was so that I could be with you when you got sick from cancer. I don't know that I would've been able to otherwise. They say things happen for a reason, don't they?
You were such a strong person, in spite of certain things, and you were kind and soft-hearted, yet you spoke up for yourself and spoke your mind. I try to emulate those qualities because they were so wonderful in you.
I wish you could have seen your other granddaughters be born, as well as Jennifer's twins, Kaitlyn and Kyle. He looks so much like you when you were a baby, yet I don't think others can see that like I do. They say he is the grumpiest of the twins, but I don't care. I carry him around in my arms just to feel like I have a little bit of you with me that close again. When I hold him, I think of you and think to myself that I will tame or calm him, kind of like the way with the animals you and I have always been so fond of.
You always loved animals so much. Audacious you wouldn't listen to anyone about how you couldn't tame a chicken or a benny hen into a pet...but you did it! I think you did it to prove it could be done! I remember how you brought home a baby fawn to nurse and care for when its mother was killed, and all the miniature animals we had...horses, birds, goats, and the dogs. I remember you caring for stray dogs or kittens left on our doorstep by family members when I was a child.
I hate that just before you turned 44 years old you found out you had cancer, and that just after you were 45 you had to succumb to its power. I'm sorry if I didn't show enough emotion, or show it the way you may have needed me to. They say you learn from experience the best, that you retain better that way. Well, I'm sorry, and I know you know this, that I didn't know what the "oncologist" was for when it first happened and you said you were going to see one. I'm sorry that from personal experience, through your being sick, I have to know now what that is.
The funeral was hard fo me, as well as for Jennifer and Butch and the others. I hated getting out of that limo that took us, eight months pregnant with Anna, no less, because everyone gasped as I got out. I walked with my head down because I didn't want them to have to see you in my face. It didn't work too well though. Everyone came to us to give their condolences at the end and then they came to me, to also tell me how much like my mother I looked. It was like looking at you they said. I didn't really know what to say besides, "Yes, thank you". Months and years later I still hear it. I don't mind, because it's true, and I think of it as a compliment somewhat. It's just a little sad and tiring after a while, but I understand it. I look in the mirror and can't help but see your face in mine too sometimes. Sometimes I think I feel you living in my skin, or living through me, when I have new experiences or react to something. I try to think of how you would've reacted or viewed it. Maybe it's crazy, but I do still feel you near me.
All in all, the beat goes on and I love you and miss you and wish you were still here with me, and us.
Love always,
~Alicia
Created June 22, 2000