Hey Ma,
So I learned something that makes me understand how you got through all those years without Daddy. No matter how much pain you are in, as long as it doesn’t keep you from your next breath, you can push through it. Wednesday I ran my first 5K with a new friend. I mentioned you while I was jogging and chatting and felt that pain in my heart that I think is here to stay since the day you left. I didn’t, however, stop jogging. I kept moving, smiled and thanked you for your comforting legacy you left behind that allows me to push through and bear through the pain.
That same day, as I was driving home I remembered how we used to talk on the phone, everyday, several times a day. I smiled at the thought, but then felt a new pain. This pain was in my stomach, and it felt as if I swallowed a small brick. Small enough to swallow, but still too heavy to digest and sit in my tummy well. It had finally hit me that this daily ritual we held everyday for all of my adult life, is now a memory. A thing of the past. How can something so constant, become something that is now only filed away in my core memory.
It reminds me of that movie, Inside Out. At first, the young girl’s core memories were yellow with pure joy, but as life progressed, sadness started to touch them. Joy attempted to save the young girls mind and did everything in her power to keep sadness from touching her memories and tarnishing everything with her depressing blue.
**Spoiler Alert**
In the end, Joy learned that not only was it okay if sadness touched the memory and tainted it a little blue, it was actually quite beautiful. It caused the young girl to value her memories and connect with them on a deeper level. Joy and sadness learned that they were not only to get along, but we a dynamic duo in this young life.
I think perhaps, I’ll allow sadness to turn our memories a little blue. To let my once yellow bubbles of us gossiping, laughing, and sharing our lives everyday become beautiful oil paintings of yellow and blue, bleeding into each other yielding hopeful shades of green. Green signifies life. I like life. No,I love it. It’s filled with surprises and a lot of lessons, if you choose to live it.
When you first said goodbye, I questioned life. I didn’t know how to live it. How can I wake up everyday and live this life that feels so foreign to me. It didn’t feel like MY life. Not the one I signed up for. Not the one I would imagine for myself as your seven year old daughter daydreaming and writing in my journal. I thought I would still have you and Daddy here, enjoying your gold years as grandparents to my children and nephews. I thought you would still be around, dancing in the living room, wiggling your old lady booty so gracefully that Daddy still couldn’t help but to blush at the sight of your fierce beauty. I pictured him with a camera in his hand, drooling over his chocolate wife and grandchildren. If I close my eyes, I can see him giving Elvin a hug, pat on the back and whispering in his ear “Nette’s hapy right?” with his intimidating Jersey da
