Shutterfly remembers

Yesterday morning I got an email from Shutterfly that I could view photos from Christmas thirteen years ago. Included in the email were some teasers. These don't seem that long ago, but so much has happened since then.

This first Christmas without Mom has been harder than I expected. I think her loss makes other losses more intense, including the loss of Dad and also of Chuck's Dad.

Today we kids got together again at her house to continue to go through things. It is so so good to be together for this task. I've had a lot of tears this evening, but they are good tears.

Mom had some things already divided up for us and labeled, so I waited to look at a lot of that until I got home.

There are pictures of my great-grandparents, whom I never knew.

And my Schmidt grandparents' wedding picture

I had the privilege of being the first baby in my family and the first grandchild in the Schmidt family. From the hairstyles and clothing it is clear this was a long time ago. Still, seeing my parents' faces as they hold me is a marker of the warmth I felt from them during their lives.

This one is my grandfather holding me and Mom with two of her sisters looking on.

I was a flower girl at my aunt and uncle's wedding.

Awkward school photos

The year we were in voluntary service.

We sorted through many things. One pile I worked on had small ziplock bags, each filled with recipes cut from magazines and newspapers, and mixed in would be some written out in Mom's careful handwriting.

One of us ran across a set of perfectly embroidered tea towels. There were five, so Mom probably had two more that she didn't get to finish for a set of seven. They have her perfectly spaced tiny stitches. We each took one home.

I wish Mom was here. I miss her.

That seems such a meaningless thing to say.

It doesn’t hold the significance of our particular relationship or our individual personalities.

Saying I miss her reduces our relationship to this generic feeling that is less than what I feel.

I want to call her.

I want to tell her things again and again.

I want to get annoyed when she complains about PACE.

I want to see her hands.

I want to touch her hair and help her to try to get it to behave.

I want to push her in the wheelchair and look at peoples’ gardens.

I want to tell her what I worry about and what is going well.

I want to have her be my Mom again.

All of this and more is included when I say I miss my Mom.

I miss consoling her.

I miss her snarky comments.

I want to feed her fruit.

I miss bringing Fritz to sit on her bed.

I miss making sure she gets to see her friends.

I miss checking in with the health care professionals, and seeing if she has eaten, and asking if she wants to go with me to a program or concert.

I miss her tiny neat handwriting and all the little notes she wrote to herself to try to remember things that she would forget as soon as they were written.

I want my mom back, but without making her feel the hard things she had to feel.

This is just a tiny bit of what I feel, and is too big to fit into the small sentence,

“I miss my Mom.”

But it is what it is. It is the same for anyone who misses someone who has died. I'm so so grateful for my sister and my brothers. It is good work, even when it is hard, and we share a lot of laughter and stories as we go. It's hard to make decisions about what to let go of...I think it feels a little too much like choosing to let go of Mom and Dad.

So we take it one step at a time. I'm glad we have not had to rush.