Life & Love

 Living our best lives takes work. Living is full of potholes. There is poverty, death, and emotional, physical, and financial issues that are thrown into our daily lives. Every day is a struggle to make it to the end of the day. We fill it with whatever we choose, but sometimes life chooses for us. My mom passed recently, which you know, but since then it seems to me that the world is filled with holes that I keep falling down. 

This is New Jersey

New Jersey is where I was born and raised, but when I turned 18 I left. The reason is not important, but I left my mom as well. It seems distance did not keep us apart until it did. As I got older I could not go see her as much. Life, potholes, and money kept me from going to see her more. 

Life is funny that way, you think you will do A and then W happens. I married a military man and we ended up being stationed in Germany. My mom and brother and sister came to visit. My mom twice as I had her first grandchild while living in Germany. Mom wanted that baby in her arms and flew over again.

Fast forward through life and I am now divorced from him, but we are still family and gather for the holidays. Another pothole filled in this case. We divorced and still remain friends. The best way for us to do it I think.

Loving people is sometimes easy and sometimes hard. Grieving people is, well I cannot even compare it to anything. Losing someone you love, and we all have, is like not being able to breathe due to lack of oxygen. It is hard to go on when our loved ones cannot.

I am on book 4 of grief. I think reading all about it should be a stage of grief. My sister and I are mailing each other our books when we are done with them. We have been floating without a purpose since we lost our mother. We are lost and clinging to each other. 

Life is filled with potholes. Filled with people who mean well, but keep asking, " Aren't you over that yet?" Why no, no I am not. People try to ask questions meaning to help, but honestly for me, just step off my grief and let me deal with it. I love you, but back off. 

Sometimes people will ask the most personal questions about how my mother died, but it is none of their business. It is mine and my family and if we want to share we will, and if we do not want to then respect that. Life continues, our love for our lost loved one continues, and we fall, and we struggle, and we breathe and we go on.

It has only been a little under 2 months since my mom died. I got a tattoo of her writing on my arm now. I read some people do that after I got it, it made sense to me. My sister and my brother will do other things to remember her. They will put up more photos of her. They will cry, they will dance to her favorite song, and they will make her favorite drinks or food. 

Love lives in all our hearts. Love lives in us. She lives in us. I look like her twin, so she definitely lives in me. Life and love, are hard at times, difficult at best. I am taking one step at a time forward and slowly moving. I know there are more potholes I will step in. This holiday season the song that says there is no place like home for the holidays had me in tears. There is no home. There is only my home. When people say they are going home, I cry, I no longer have a place to go home to, but then I realize, I am home for other family members. They consider my home, their coming home and then I am thankful for my mom being our home for so many years. 

Live and love, potholes, struggles, happiness, dancing, it is filled with abundance. It is full of her memories. Hardships and death and life are all mingled and on any day I could be happening, or I could be crying. I miss her, but know she would want me happy and live my best life. 

I pray you are well. I pray you are doing the very best you can. Know you are enough. Know you are loved even if you do not feel it. 

I pray for a good day for you,

Your friend,

Debbie

xoxoxoxo