It was six months on Tuesday I lost my mom. It still seems like yesterday. I wonder if it ever WON’T feel like “just yesterday.” I took this shot of my mom and Kat wading in Grand Traverse Bay last summer, although I was originally shooting the cat tails and beach grass when they wandered in to the shot. Can’t tell you now how glad I am they did. It’s one of my favorite shots of them…even though it wasn’t supposed to be of them.
Life isn’t a tiptoe through the tulips. ~ Shannon Hoon
Nature is not a place to visit. It is home. ~ Gary Snyder
Youth is a perpetual intoxication; it is a fever of the mind. ~ François Duc de la Rochefoucauld
The bee emerging from deep within the peony departs reluctantly. ~ Basho Matsuo
Every year, if she didn’t happen to be with us, I’d send my mom flowers on her birthday. Last year she was here in Arizona, celebrating, eating cake, loving on her beautiful granddaughter, and so very full of life. If someone had told me that night it would be our last birthday, I’d have dismissed such a preposterous statement without a second thought. How silly! How silly to think she wouldn’t be with us this April 24th. How silly to imagine I would never send her flowers on her birthday, again.
Every book you read about grief tells you the same thing: that each milestone after the death of a loved one will bring fresh grief, and new tears, and unimaginable sadness. And that is exactly where I am as her birthday arrives…
…and I have not sent her flowers.
Rather, the flowers for her birthday this year were a beautiful bouquet of tulips on the alter at church: In Memory.
I miss you so very, very much, Mom. I wish you were here for me to wrap my arms around and wish you the happiest of birthdays. And I know you know…I love you with all my heart!
Lisa
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. ~ Seneca
Nature does nothing uselessly. ~ Aristotle
The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses. ~ Francis Bacon, Sr.
And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Sensitive Plant”
