I look up at the sky and think differently about what I see there. Now, I think of Heaven when I look up. I wonder if mother is watching me in some way. Does she talk to God about me? Does she tell Him the things that are on her heart and mind? Does she go up to Him and rest in His arms? Is she really and truly happy and healthy? Does she miss me like I miss her?

When I see gray haired ladies, walking slowly through our church with their canes, next to their gray haired husbands, I wonder why my mother couldn’t have lived to grow old with her husband. I wonder why she couldn’t be here to see her grandchildren grow up, get married and have children of their own.

When I look through my recipe box, my thoughts turn to mother. She made my recipe box with plastic canvas and yarn. Then she wrote out favorite family recipes and gave them to me when I got married. Her neat and orderly handwriting speaks to me of a woman who loved to cook for her family, who delighted in trying new recipes, and who also had her share of “flops.”

I cannot even to bear to think about Christmas. She loved Christmas. It was a time when she could count on all of her family being together. She decorated her tree with a passion I could never muster up for my own. She stuffed the bare spots of a real tree with garland and lights and when she was done you would think she had found the most perfect live tree on the lot. All of the traditions that belong to our family at Christmas time were her ideas. We were just doing what she said to do, when we were supposed to do it, and loving all of it.

Her voice is still on the answering machine at her house. Whenever I call and my dad isn’t home, I hear my mother’s voice. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I hang up because I don’t want to hear it. Sometimes I listen and yearn for her to really answer the phone so we can chat.

Grief is a process… and the only way out of it, is through.

Marla