Hoppy Easter

Mom used to say that all the time. She'd say it, then giggle. It was one of my favorite, stupid, things she did.

Last weekend I spent in Sacramento at a scrapbook retreat. In preparation of this retreat I spent DAYS staging what I would be doing because I knew I couldn't bring my entire scrapbook room. In the deciding process of what to do for 4 full days at a scrapbook retreat, I decided I would redo all my 12X12 scrapbooks into Traverl's Notebooks (8X8 ultimately). Many people think I'm crazy, but this gal thinks 58 HUGE 12X12 scrapbooks are not scalable. I mean, that's just a ton to try to move. And most people won't pick up a scrapbook that size, but they may pick up a smaller one.

Anyhow, the years I decided to work on were full of little trips with mom and dad. Reliving these vacations was such a blessing. It brought back so many fond memories. Which then got me really thinking about mom.

And missing mom. Not in a sad way. Just missing her.

I have a folder of "mom" stuff that I keep. It's got letters I write to her, sayings, poems, etc. It is my little treasure trove of memories and healing. I stumbled onto this little gem I wrote about 4 months after she passed. I read it and thought, Gosh...it's still true today.

I’ll never forget the day she died.

But I’ll also never forget the day after she died.

I was in her home trying to decide what to keep, what to get rid of and what to try to sale. It was my first full day without her. From the minute I woke up until I laid down my head to go to sleep at night. The first day she wasn’t there for any part of it.

She couldn’t hear about it, I couldn’t tell her about it and she wasn’t there to care about it.  The one person who cared about every minute of my life wasn’t there to worry about it anymore. I was experiencing the worst day of my entire life and the one person I wanted to call to help me through it was gone.

The day she died was horrible but the day after was worse because it really sank in and there was no way to try and pretend yesterday was all a bad dream because I had woken up and it was still a reality.

The one person I shared everything with was gone and didn’t say goodbye. She was gone somewhere that I would never be able to see her again, gone to a place so far away that I couldn’t even reach her.

It was the an entire day without her from start to finish.

It was my first full day in my new role as a motherless daughter and I didn’t show up prepared, but that didn’t matter because there aren’t any qualifications for this role.

I’ll never forget the day she died just like I will never forget the day after she died because who I became on the day after she died was different from who I was the day she died.

I’ll also never forget all the days in between because those are the days where I became Jo’s daughter again instead of a motherless daughter.