Missing Her/But Finding My Family

It’s a strange year. Holiday’s are supposed to be perfect and yet the glitz and glimmer is dimming as fantasy is traded for reality. But before you click delete thinking this is one of my depressing blogs, it’s not. Hope will come at the end as it does in any good story.

Kathy and I were driving to Portland to spend Thanksgiving with two of my three sisters and their families. I have a bad cold and feel like crap but sometimes illness is just the thing needed to make us really “go to that place in our minds” we’d rather avoid.

I kept thinking about my mom and as I thought the more water flowed from the corner of my eyes. Even now as I write these words misty eyes get in the way of my thoughts. It’s good to miss her though. Missing mom shows how much she meant to me.

A funny thing is happening in my family, or perhaps it’s just me. I see my sisters more clearly now. I wonder that mom and dad, unknowingly, became an obstacle to us seeing each other as adults. I think that happens in families. Or, perhaps it’s something in me that failed to look beyond established roles.

On Thanksgiving Day I felt my sisters looking at me more closely or perhaps I was more open to being their big brother again. I don’t know what happened, I don’t know why it happened, but it’s good. My eldest sister wasn’t with us but Judi, Dana, their kids, husbands all together having a great time getting to know each other again.

I still miss my mom. I remember her smile as she cooked fudge, stirred divinity, and put candy canes in our tea.

Everything and everyone has a time and a season. Our time and our season all will come to an end. But in the sadness we must not forget to look at the end as a new beginning. It takes time. Don’t rush it and remember, resist the temptation to control it.

Yep, this is a strange year indeed.

2 Comments

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  Adam November 27, 2010 at 12:47 pm

  I feel your same pain. I lost my mother less then a month before I got married last year. It is a hard thing to recover from, if you even recover at all. I do know that the hardest thing for some can be accepting what happened. I, being very close to my mother, thought it would be very hard to accept what had happened but I realized that things happen for a reason. I saw it bringing my whole family together. It made those of us who took her for granted see really what she did. She was loving and nice to everyone. I don’t know if I will ever get used to any holiday without her, but I just have to be thankful for time we had together and try to remember all the wonderful things she had done for us all. My mother’s passing was sudden and unexpected, I don’t know what is harder. knowing it will happen any day or getting the news as you arrive at the hospital that she wont make it. I hope and pray both of our mother’s are in heaven and looking down on us. I know you are a good man Rick and your mother I am sure had much to do with that.
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  Marisa Platz November 30, 2010 at 12:27 am

  Rick,
  I don’t know if you remember us, The Thorntons’. My mom is Tori. We lived behind you on Brentwood growing up. I’m glad that I came across this. We just lost my brother to Heaven on November 2nd; he was 22-years-old. Tomorrow marks 4 weeks. I was looking on your Facebook page when I happened to stumble upon this. I was searching for your house that you rent out. Just thought I would stop by and say hi.

  Marisa