What on earth can I say? I just feel so sad. I just can't believe that she's really gone. I was there when she died. I was there at the viewing and the funeral, but I have an overwhelming feeling like she still at the hospital. Like if I go back to the chest pain ER, she'd still be there! That's got to be weird. I know it has to do with how suddenly and unexpectedly she died. But it feel so unreasonable to me to want to go back there, to feel like she would still be there. I feel so confused. It's the last day of November. Tomorrow it will be December. I feel like I'm being dragged kicking and screaming into Christmas. I would have been so happy this year, to be doing our usual traditions as a new bride. But what can I do now. I can try to content myself with knowing that my Mom is spending her first Christmas in 42 years with my Dad, but that doesn't help me with the empty feeling I have without her here with me now. Without both of them. And still the little girl voice in in back of my head wants to scream "She can't be dead!" I can be in a crowded noisy room and feel all alone and disconnected to every one.

I know it's been just over two months since my Mom died. Did I think this would be easier? It is actually getting harder. Thanksgiving was difficult, but Christmas is like a mountain to climb. I would like to go away for the holidays, and my husband and I actually had already scheduled time off (I had already asked for December 20th off to spend the day with my Mom on her birthday, now how do I spend the day?) so we could go away. But he is going to do the holidays like we have done before, with his children and his Mother, And his brother's family. I don't want to do that, but how can I say no? I know how unexpected death can come. I think it would be selfish of me to tell him that he can't spend Christmas with his family. Who knows what this next year might bring? This could be the last year for any one of us. Just like last Christmas was the last Christmas for my Mom. It will hurt to spend Christmas in the usual way, but it will hurt no matter where I am, or what I am doing, so I can give him this.

This is our first year as a married couple. This year has had so many major stress factors in it. Planning our wedding all summer was difficult, but at least my Mom got to see everything and be part of all of the planning. She saw me in my gown, saw my bouquet (silk flowers) saw our rings, and since my husband and I were together for 4 years before we actually made the legal and church commitment she saw what our marriage would be like. We already had everything ready for our October 13th wedding date when she died on September 10th. We buried her one September 13th, one month before the wedding. It was very, very hard, but I was able to set my grief aside for that one day. I think that I was able to do that was my Mom's gift to me. So at 50 I am a new bride, a new orphan and an mature woman. I feel all jumbled up inside. I was usually comfortable with not having children of my own, but now that my Mom is gone, the last of my birth family is gone. I was an only child. I have no roots and no leaves. I am the barren daughter and I feel the weight of the decisions I've made in my life.

How do I get through Christmas? I feel like I'm walking though a mine field. Last I was ambushed by "Charlie Brown's Christmas" I remember when it first came out. It was 1965 and it was the first Christmas after my Dad died. My Mom did such a wonderful job making Christmas special for me. I remember all of the presents that she got for me that year. All of the decorations at the house where we'd moved. It was hard, but it was really great. It hurt so bad seeing that show on TV. The memories were so vivid and fresh, it was almost like a flashback. It made me miss her even more. How can I go about the plans and shopping that I need to do for everyone, when she would have been shopping with me? And I already had some things for her for Christmas, and her birthday on December 20th... I'd already bought birthday cards for her. How do I go to church on Christmas eve when it's so hard just to get through a regular Sunday without her there with us? I'm so very tired. Achy. I know that it's all a part of grief. And I know that this is something that I just have to feel and let be until it becomes easier to live with. But for now it becomes harder and harder as the Christmas season gets closer. I wish I could just hibernate until some time in January!

Mom,

I miss you so much! How can you be gone? You've always been there for me. Always been there with me. What can I say. I feel empty, stripped out. Lost. I went to the house today. It feels so bad without you there. Wrong. I have to clean it out, but it's your stuff. I'm intuding.

I dreamed that I went to her house to work on cleaning it out, and she was still there. I think in the dream she was moving, or would be moving soon to a senior apartment near us. (She would have hated that!). I was taking things that were mine and thinning her things out, but making sure that she had everything she needed. I left the aluminium measuring spoon set that I wanted to take with me. All of the dream is a jumble of what I was planning to do today. There are things I wanted to pick up from the house, winter coats that I would like to use myself, the measuring spoons that would have come in handy for making pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, a couple more books, odds and ends of mine and hers that I would like to have with me. The least surprising bit of the dream is that she was still there at the house. A book I'm reading ("Healing the Adult Child's Grieving Heart", by Alan D Wolfelt, PH.D.) mentions making a list of what I used to think it would be like after my Mom died, vs what it really is like. But that is just it. I had no idea or consideration that she would die. Unrealistic as that may sound, she has always been there for me. After my father died when I was a child my Mom and I spent so much time together.And she was healthy and active at 76. I thought we would have at least 10, 15 maybe even 20 more years together. To have her die so suddenly and unexpectedly like that makes it feel unreal. I can't find the words to convey how enormously sad and devastated I feel.

I write these words and post them in this Blog like that might matter, or change things, or even be important. But they are nothing. They don't even scratch the surface of what I feel, or mean anything to anyone else by me. Maybe I just want to leave words like markers to show me where I've been on this journey of grief and mourning. Maybe the idea of posting this helps me in some way. I have no idea if it really does, that will be something I can decide later.

I have read so many books on grief and mourning already, they all tell me that what I feel is normal and even healthy. But what I want is my Mom's presence back in my life. We were more than mother and daughter, we were friends. We talked on the phone at least twice a day and usually we spent the weekend with her, going places together, church, shopping, antiquing. I called her about hundreds of little things, funny things I heard, things I saw and knew she would like, questions when I knew she knew the answer. I see her picture and she looks so full of life, (and she was until that last evening).

I see what I am writing, and truly, they are disconnected thoughts, but such is the nature of my mind these days. I am not capable of more then this. I am filled with such saddness. Lost. Wandering. Then world seems a less hospitable place without her. I feel like a tree without roots. She was my connection to the past, to my roots. What do I do now?

Beginnings

I begin these posting to find my way though the fog of grief. My Mom died suddenly in September 2007. I wish I could write profound wisdom. I wish I could write answers that would guide my path. I wish I could find logic and sense in this, but the honest truth, is I feel lost. I desperetly miss my Mom. There is nothing that will fix this. Life is forever changed from that night when she went to the hospital.

I have survive my first holiday without her, wounded and confused. I simply cannot believe that she is really gone. She was healthy and alive one day, and gone the next. Words fail me. She called to say she thought she was having a heart attack, but it was an aortic dissection. Nothing they did at the hospital could stop it. I watched in horror as she slipped away.

Perhaps I think that by sending this out as an anonymous posting on the internet I will reach her in some way. Maybe I just want to reach myself. Who am I now that both of my parents are gone? I feel like I left a huge part of my in that hospital ER. How do adjust my mind to this world shattering change?