A Long Summer . . .

Today is the first official day of my summer vacation, and normally I would be ecstatic, but oddly enough, I am dreading it . . . I haven't posted in a long time because quite honestly, I feel so lost. I am having a difficult time coming to terms with my mother's death.  This isn't how I thought my life would turn out.  In the back of my mind, I always knew she would probably go before me, but I always thought it was light years from whenever I thought about it.  If I had only known that it was going to be so soon, I would have done thing so differently.  But then again, wouldn't we all?

There is no way to prepare for death.  It just happens.  I don't mean to minimize life, but it just seems so cut and dry sometimes.  Then you start thinking about why are you on this earth and what is your role.  You wish you can have the kind of life that you are supposed to have, but sadly this only happens rarely.

If life is just a series of lessons (and I feel it is), and we evolve into the person we are supposed to be with each lesson, then my mother's death is supposed to teach me something.  Right now, unfortunately, I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself.  I loved her so much (wish I had showed her more) and I know she loved me unconditionally (even when I wasn't the perfect daughter) and now I feel a huge void in my life.  It is selfish to wish that she was still here . . . she was so broken by the time of her death . . . not the woman who moved us to SC in 1975 with everything we owned packed into an Oldsmobile, driving down I-95 searching for a better life.

She changed her life dramatically, so that we could have a better one, so I need to find myself.  The "me" she would want me to be.  The "me" who will continue to make her proud.  The "me" my girls and my grandson can look up to,and one day look back after I'm gone and say she used everything God gave her.  Maybe I need to drive on the I-95 of my life . . .