A Missing That Never Leaves

I hear her voice when the rain whispers soft on the window pane. It comes unexpectedly, like most treasures in life, this gift of memory that swathes the mind with tenderness, love and all that was before. Maybe it's all that brave I wore while planting our flower pots with my husband this year. The array of variant plants arranged in fresh new pots scattered around our yard. I wanted change and I don't even know the names of these annuals, but she would. Or perhaps her recently discovered garden book with her handwritten notes penned in slanted cursive and I felt her then too when I handed the spiral bound pages to my brother, him with her green thumb and all. You left too soon and I have so much to tell you. I still cry sometimes when nobody sees. The missing, it never goes away.

I wonder if my first breath was as soul-stirring to my mother as her last breath was to me.

~Lisa Goich~

Maybe it's when I look at my own daughter, how her face mirrors my mom's at times, it steals my breath and they never really knew each other so the missing digs a tunnel right down to the deepest part of me. It must be universal, like a dark purple bruise cloaking the heart, it never heals proper. Only fades into a brownish welt, throbs a bit less.

This grief, it swallows all that was before, leaving the ones left behind wondering about the next steps, the looming moments ahead with that inky dark void. I miss my mom and that will never go away. But my clever God caulks those empty spaces with infinite creativity. A daughter whose smile sends ripples of joy through the sad. Decades-old spiral bound notebook harboring beloved handwriting. Siblings who shoveled through the tunnels, each at their own sweaty, stumbling pace. A neighbor who winged me tight and loved all the messy part of me. Regardless.

And when the rain whispers softly on a cloudy June day I take a glance back at before, the pain and the healing, the mountains of sorrow and the wobbly journey toward now. Inhaling remnants of  grief, I say to God the only words that make sense when life goes awry, thank you for holding my hand.