David, my mother-in-law, and David's grandparents all sent/gave me very nice Mother's Day cards. While going through some boxes trying to purge the house of unnecessary items before the babies arrive, I found some Mother's Day cards that I had bought in advance for my mom. That made me cry. I also found some beautiful Happy Birthday Daughter cards that she had bought to give to me. I'm keeping them to give to Baby A when she's a little older. My mom so loved her cards and I know she would have found the perfect cards to send to me during my pregnancy and for the babies' birth. A few more people like her and the Post Office would never have to raise stamp prices and Hallmark would be the best-performing stock on the Street.
I hardly ever dream about her, but I did last night. I was telling her that I was worried about the delivery, and she told me everything was going to be fine. I cherish the dreams I get to have about her because for those brief instants it's like she's still with me.
One of my biggest causes for sadness is that my babies will never know her or know how much she would have loved them. I know everyone thinks their mom is special, but my mom really was an amazing person and I am going to have a really hard time living up to the example she set as a mother. I miss her so much and the pain is so great that I just have to completely put it out of my mind because I just cry and cry and cry otherwise. The people who say that it gets better or easier are absolute liars. It does not get any better or any easier; you just learn to live with it and to develop a new appreciation for the depths of misery humans can reach and still go on.
The last Mother's Day when I physically saw my mom was in 2007 when we were in Alaska. It was right after my law school graduation and David and I were on a different flight from my parents and aunt and uncle up to Fairbanks. They didn't get in until really late that night, but I told her she had to call me so that I could give her her present in person. I remember it was a book for the Mother of the Bride and a really pretty glass nail file. I found both on her dresser afterward. In 2008 I was in Pasadena for work and I must have sent six or seven cards from the hotel. You'd think a fancy hotel would be able to get its mail out on time--nope, none of the cards were postmarked until like four days after I had dropped them off, so they were all late. I felt so terrible.
I know that the babies' birth is going to be a wonderful, joyous day for me, but it is going to be tinged with sadness that my mom isn't there and won't be there. I am so grateful to David's mom for coming out for three weeks after they're born to help us, but I'm also so jealous that she'll get to hold our babies and they'll get to know her, and they won't know anything about my mom except what I can tell them. I hope I can do her justice because she deserves it.
My first Christmas, December 1981.
Wearing red plastic bells on our heads, Christmas 2006.
At Longwood Gardens, Christmas 2007.
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