Honoring My Mom

The last few weeks have been so overwhelming, it's almost hard to wrap my mind around everything that has happened. To think that three weeks ago today, I was on my way to the hospital to see my mom . . . less than a week later, she was gone . . . a week after that we were holding a funeral service for her and now . . . a week after that, it's Mother's day.

In moments, I feel acceptance of her passing, in other moments, it doesn't seem real, and in other moments, especially on a day like today, I feel her absence deeply. I suppose it will be like that for a while.

Last Saturday, the funeral mass and reception for my mother ended up being a more beautiful and more enjoyable experience than I could have imagined. The church was filled with a couple hundred people who deeply loved my mother. For an empathic person such as myself, funerals can be extremely difficult, since I literally feel what everyone else is feeling, on top of my own feelings, but much to my surprise, all I felt was the incredible outpouring of love and appreciation for my mom. It made it much easier for a "sensitive" like me.

Since my mom was someone who loved to laugh and loved to party, we wanted her service to be upbeat and full of laughter . . . and it ended up being that and more. I know my mom was pleased to see all of her favorite people gathered together in one place, sharing some laughs and enjoying each others company. I had moments of almost feeling guilty that I was enjoying myself so much, as I visited with relatives, old family friends and neighbors, and joined in the fun of sharing stories about my mom that had everyone chuckling. I kept trying to remind myself that my mom would want us to be enjoying ourselves, and that she would have been disappointed if we sat around crying the whole time.

I have been wondering how my mom will let me know that she is around. The day after her service, I went to lay down on my bed in the middle of the afternoon and heard the strangest sound. It sounded like someone was walking between the ceiling and the floor of the upstairs. Since it was keeping me from napping, I got up to investigate. After about 15 minutes, I was coming up with nothing and was about to give up but something made me open the door to the side yard and much to my surprise, I saw a swarm of bees buzzing around the door. I realized the noise I was hearing was bees actually getting into the wall and cruising around between the first and second floor.

At first, I groaned "Not again" since I just had a bee hive removed from the upstairs wall last fall, but I didn't have the energy to worry about it right then, so I decided I'd just deal with it in the morning and went to lay down in the family room. The next day, I left a message for the Bee Guy and spent the afternoon rescuing bees from inside the house because I kept forgetting about the swarm and leaving the back door opened.

I wondered why the bees came back and I giggled to myself when I remembered that when we found the hive last fall, the Bee Guy told me that they had been building the hive for about a year - and it had been exactly a year since Lucky had passed away. I joked at the time that maybe it was Lucky's way of letting me know she was around. So, since these bees arrived the day after my mom's funeral, I wondered if Lucky and my mom were playing a little joke on me.

Amazingly, before I got a call back from the Bee Guy, the bees disappeared . . . they were just gone and they haven't returned since. It seems they only stayed long enough for me to get the potential significance.

My mom was always known as "The Rose Lady" because of her incredible rose garden, so I told my family the other day that I'll know my mom has visited me if a rose bush suddenly springs up in my backyard. While the rose bush may be a bit far fetched, I am going to continue to look for signs that my mom is around.

And today was definitely a day that I wished for a sign that she was around. I wanted to feel close to her, but my emotions seemed to be getting in the way. I put on an album we used to listen to together when I was growing up, and while it helped some, it didn't help enough. It was a challenging day for sure. I never thought about how difficult Mother's Day is for people who have lost their mother. The one thing that kept ringing in my head today was how much my mom loved to laugh. My mom's brother (and my god father) gave me this picture last week. It was taken when my mom was visiting him in Japan and the picture warmed my heart because I can feel her joy when I look at this picture . . . and it made me think, maybe that's how I will feel close to my mom . . . whenever I can find a reason to laugh.