So, after someone dies, at some point, you just get on with life.   Right?  Not so much.

Eight years ago, my mother died.  I am less ok with it now than I was, let’s say, two years ago.  Time is passing too quickly.  Maybe taking care of my Dad’s monthly and business affairs is taking its toll.  And he found old slides that I am transferring onto the computer.  Some fabulous vintage pictures (and some that so tragically epitomize the 1970s that it is painful to put them in the family album).  And I see my mom, at my age, in the 1960s. I look like her.  I have some of her traits.  Mostly good ones, although the wrinkles are unpleasant.

And then I look to pictures of my family.  My young-ish family: my wonderful son and fabulous spouse.  A life graced with good fortune and love.

Like most days, I look back with pain, sadness and love, and I look forward with gratitude, hope and love.

But these past days my Mom’s loss has been so present, so palpable, that I wasn’t sure I could breathe.  I guess that is the nature of grief: it hits you sometimes lightly, and other times, it lets loose a prizefighter punch.  And it makes the highs higher, the lows, lower and the precious moments that Mom missed ever so more poignant.

Love endures.  Loss sucks, no matter how many years it has been.