7 Years.
7 years.
Little known fact about me...my lucky number is 7, backup is 3, and then 9. I also do this thing of adding and dividing…I am a real wonder I am. 🤷🏻♀️
Seven also has all sorts of symbolism associated with it. Google for more on this. 👈🏻 #fascinating
So it struck me sideways that today is the seventh anniversary of the passing of one of the most pivotal people in my life. Especially as I have just recently cracked open a box, for the first time in a dozen years, of writings and recordings I did with her. I listened for a full minute and a half to her voice before having to shut it off. 🥺
Over four years, I recorded and documented her voice and stories as gifts to her children and their children and their children’s children and beyond. I was naive believing it was something that would give them comfort, laughter, pride, etc., when God forbid she was no longer here. Seven years later, I don’t know if any of them have listened to them, and I don’t blame them if they haven’t as I haven’t been able to bear it myself.
Grief is a tricky thing. I have written more words about it than just about anything else because it fascinates me. Ironically, she and I had many long conversations about grief as it was complicated for her too. The irony that her passing was the first grieving I did in a healthy manner in real time (thanks to therapy) is not lost upon me.
I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. I mean A LOT.
None more than with her.
You make decisions. You try to do the right thing. You try to think of others. Be unselfish.
…and yet, you still fuck up.
Death means no second chances to say, “I’m sorry.”
One thing I hate about myself is when I hide away so I can lick my wounds, and secretly hope that those that hurt me or hate me will forget about me. Just let me live and all of that.
She told me a story once about a bully in her life, and my God I laugh-cry in the remembering of her telling it. Her sassiness and defiance. She was sweet as sugar, but my God she was fierce.
God, I miss her.
So, this is the year I get off the mat (so to speak). Listen to the recordings (all one thousand hours or so of them - just kidding, sorta), read the words, touch all the memories, cry all the tears, grieve or re-grieve whatever comes up, and I pass onto others the treasures of that beautiful, glorious season I had listening and learning from her.
They’re not really mine anymore.
…and…
Because the best way to honor someone is to remember them. To share them.
She deserves that. She deserves that from me.
Mothers come in all forms, and though she wasn’t mine (I wish!) - she treated me (as she did everyone) like I was one of her own. That type of unconditional, magical love heals a person. In ways I will never be able to explain, it healed me.
🤍
So here are some words I wrote seven years ago today with an image from her land…
11.22.2017
One of the finest human beings I have ever known is being laid to rest today. I have written thousands of words about her over the years and hundreds in the last two weeks alone as the memories washed over me like a tsunami.
There are people in this world that with just one touch will change your life forever, and she is one of those individuals. I describe her, and her treasured home, as magic, and she is and it is...I say “is” because if there is anything she taught me, it is that this world is not my home and home is wherever she is...
I took this photo on a walk behind her home on this day in 2011, and I can almost feel the cold wind on my face and hear her calling out to me from the back door.
There will never ever be another like her, and while I long for the day when I run into Jesus’ arms, my hope is that her embrace immediately follows his.
May our lives bring magic to even one life, much less the thousands her’s did....❤️
#DDS
Author’s Note: My apologies for the silence here these past several weeks. It was not planned nor intentional. Life has been full, and while the words have been plentiful on a daily basis, they have not been words I wanted to share publicly. They are tender, raw, beautiful, brutal, and random. Also, I am in a season where my heart is full of hope while also holding its breath. Waiting. I want to be fully present, patient, and savor the magic in both the here and now…and in the glorious possibilities of ‘What if?’ No one loved bigger than #DDS and I want to honor all she taught me…all she helped heal in me…and give my heart every opportunity to have its deepest desires, and to love to its fullest capacity. Nothing is more important than love, and all of us, not to mention this world we reside in, could use more love in our lives. ❤️