Someone's Daughter

I was once someone's daughter, but now at 51, I'm an orphan.  No, I'm not a child, and yes, it's ridiculous to call yourself an orphan at my age, but it's the most definitive way in which I can explain how I feel.

This has been a hard and long summer.  Usually I cannot wait to be out of school and yearn for summer like a child yearns for candy, but I still have 21 days before I go back to work, and it feels like an eternity.  This is like the summer that never ends.  Why is it so bleak?  It's one of the "firsts" - you know, the first Christmas without my mom, the first New Year's without my mom, the first 4th of July without my mom, and now my first summer without my mom, my best friend.

Lost doesn't even begin to describe how I have felt and still feel . . . yes, at this very moment, I'm crying yet again.

I am loved, I know that. But no one will ever love me like my mom did.  It was a special and unconditional love that knew no boundaries.  All she ever wanted was for me to be myself.  She loved that Billy Joel song "I Love You Just the Way You Are," and when I hear it, I know she is singing to me.  She did love me just the way I was.

She knew me in ways that no one else will ever know me.  Yes, I am known to my husband as his wife.  To my kids, I'm their mom.  To my grandson, I'm Mimi.  To my students, I'm Mrs. Frazier.  To my friends, I'm Laurie.  But to my mom, I was just the real me.  I didn't have to be anybody.

I miss those daily phone calls when she used to just call to ask how I was.  I would get so mad sometimes because it seemed like she had radar and always called as soon as I got home or she would call at the wrong times or she would call when I didn't feel like talking.  But now, those calls will never come again, and I miss them deeply.  She didn't want anything from me, she just wanted to know how my day was.  That doesn't happen very often nowadays.

Working through my grief is a journey that I will be taking for the rest of my life.  They say time makes it better, and yes, I do subscribe to that saying, but it also takes me further away from my mom.  I am starting to forget little things about her and it makes me so sad.  I don't like to read like I used to because we shared that bond but now I have no one to share the stories with.  I miss our crazy Saturday morning yardsale treks and how we would go and eat lunch after our shopping for yet more needless things.

Looking into my past needs to be a lesson, not a sentence.  God puts us on this earth to go through a series of lessons and with each lesson, we are supposed to learn to become the person we are ultimately destined to be.  I will continue to weave my past into my present so that my future is stronger than ever.

But I still miss being someone's daughter  . . . .