Time stops for no one

After 21 days, I am going back to work tomorrow.  I have mixed emotions - I'm scared and sad and tired and weak, yet I am also optimistic and hopeful that going back to a routine will begin the healing process.  It's good to have order in your life, and the last three weeks (well really the last four months) have been like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing.

I told my husband yesterday that I don't even feel like teaching anymore.  He was pretty shocked to hear me say that, and then he said, "Is that how your mother would want you to feel?"  I wanted to cry for being so miserable and pitiful.  She was so very proud of me . . . I'm the only one in my family who graduated from college - Bachelor's and Master's degrees.  Was she proud of me?  Yes!!  She used to talk about being at my first graduation with Kristen on her knee (Kristen was not even two), and then she was there for the second one (Master's) in May of 2008.  She didn't like crowds and surely didn't like all the stairs she had to climb in the Civic Center, but she was there.  Both times she saw me walk across that stage and clutch that diploma.  For that I will be forever thankful.

I do regret that she never got to see me in action as a teacher.  She never even came to my classroom . . . I don't know why, but it never worked out.  But she knew what my days were like . . . I filled her ear with everything that happened . . . I usually called her in the car on the way home from work as that was the only alone time I had.  If I ever missed those phone calls, she would call me and say, "You didn't call me."

So tomorrow as I drive home from work, there will be no phone call.  The silence will be heartbreaking and the feeling will be stifling.  As much as I will want to pick up that phone and dial 645-2522, I can't . . . not ever again.  I see her number as a favorite in my contacts . . . 645-2522 . . . I am starting to forget the sound of her voice . . . yes, I have deleted all the voice mails I've had from her, never thinking she would leave me, and the last text message I have from her asks me to call her because she is so worried that she hadn't heard back from the nursing home.  She was only at the nursing home for four days . . .

Going back to school tomorrow will be one of the most difficult days of my life because it is also a reminder that life goes on.  No matter how much you are hurting or suffering, time continues, people keep living, and the world keeps spinning . . . it stops for no one . . . me included.

I may not be able to call my mom, but I will be talking to her every day on my way home . . . I hope she hears me.