I have to be completely honest and tell you that I didn’t truly live the first 5 or so years after I lost my mother.  If I said anything else I’d be a huge liar. 

All my thoughts are things I feel have been helpful in finding myself again and truly living after losing such an important person in my life. 

One regret I have is not completely filling our a journal my friends Billie and Steph gave me after losing my mom.  Maybe it’s because I was 17 and felt like I had no time to deal with her death.  Maybe it’s because I was never much of a writer in those days, let alone one who was ready to deal with her feelings.  If you know of someone who has lost someone important then I highly recommend purchasing this journal: Angel Catcher: A Journal of Loss and Remembrance.  And don’t just purchase them but really encourage them to actually fill it out when they just can’t “deal” with it anymore. 

 
I visit the cemetary often, but probably not nearly as often as I actually should.  Does anyone know the “standard” number of visits to a grave?  Is there one?  I like to go on my birthday to thank her for giving birth to me.  I like to go on her birthday and I take a cupcake, cry, and eat it.  I like to go on holidays, all of them.  I like to go on Mother’s Day to again say thank you.  I like to go when I’m pissed off at the world and I feel like no one cares and if she were here then she probably would.  I like to go and see if I can hear her, see her, smell her.  I realize she isn’t truly there but sometimes when it’s so gorgeous outside and the birds are chirping they seem to be the loudest when I’m all alone at that cemetary.  Often I see a butterfly and that’s definitely a clue that I’m not alone when I’m there.  But I often drive by and wonder if I’m a bad daughter for not stopping and saying hello.  Most of the time I convince myself that I’m not because really it’s just a place we left her body.  She’s actually with me every where that I go.  I don’t have to visit a stone to know that.  Sometimes the stone just makes me feel all that much closer to her. 

If nothing else, it feels good to write this down.  I guess I could care less if anyone ever reads it.  It’s more for me than anything else.