April Showers...

This is a picture my dad took last summer, from the campsite where he spends his summers. It is one of my favorite places...because of its beauty...and because of the memories it holds for me, which makes this picture all the more appropriate for today's post.

Life is good right now... and I am feeling very grateful. But... with the brightness in my life right now... there is an important day coming up that is weighing on my mind... Monday will mark two years since my mom died. Two years. It is hard for me to believe...but I don't know whether to say that it feels like it has been longer or shorter than that... Some days it feels like she was here yesterday... other days it feels like she has been gone forever... time is a crazy thing that way. The amount of time that has passed is not important I suppose... the important thing is that I miss her, every day I miss her.

I have heard people say how, after losing someone they love, they had moments where they picked up their phone to call that person...forgetting that they were gone... that hasn't really happened to me... I think I am acutely aware that my mom is gone... but I will say that as time has passed I do find myself thinking about how much I would like to talk to my mom about certain things...or something happens and I think, Mom would like that, or would have liked to talk about that.

I was home a lot this week, suffering from a sinus infection and strep throat. I found myself reading my blog... the posts from the couple weeks before Mom died to the few weeks after... I had written that I hoped my memories of that time, of mom's illness and death would fade... and even hoped that I would forget some of them... so why did I write about it and keep it in a blog if there were things I wanted to forget? Because it's part of me, what I experienced... and looking back at it now, as emotional as it makes me, I am glad I wrote what I wrote... even though it was hard to write and is hard to revisit.

The truth is, for me, two years have offered some healing... It took a long time for me to think of my mother without thinking of cancer, of her frail body, of her exhaustion... Following her death, my memories of my mother were of her being sick and of her dying... and I resented cancer even more, for not only taking my mother, but for taking my memories of her as well... That has changed... When I think of my mom now, I can laugh about something she used to do or say, or think about the things she liked and enjoyed... and I can remember her smile.. and recently remembered how she looked when she would say something to crack herself up... and it makes me smile.

My mom was an eternal optimist... no matter what the situation, she would find the silver lining... although I don't think she had found the silver lining of her disease... even though I do think she had come to terms with it.... Her optimism is one reason I like this picture, the rainbow. I also like it because that river, is where Mom kayaked... spent hours on that river kayaking... and to her, it was a pot of gold. She and I spent hours together on that river... paddling up the river, looking at the plants, mom especially loved the ferns, the roots of the trees, the reflections, the clam shells we saw along the shore, and any critters we encountered... Mom often sang as we paddled... anything from the song "Rubber Ducky" to "Amazing Grace"... or she would make up her own melody...

As I reflect on Mom's death this year.. I also want to think about her life... her death has been such a big part of my life...and for so long felt like we just lost her... that her death overshadowed her life... and I want to reverse that.. So I have decided that I want to share some stories about my mom..

Sticking with the picture... I want to share one of the moments my mom and I shared on this river. This campground is in a part of Maine where the weather can change instantly.. from sun to rain...calm to windy, and when there are thunderstorms up there they are pretty intense. I was visiting Mom and Dad and it was a day that was pretty warm, no wind, and it was partly sunny. The radio had said there was a good chance of rain showers... and Mom and I wanted to go kayaking.

The sky was a little dark in places, definitely looked like it may rain.. but up there, it can look like that all day and not rain at all... Dad told us if we went kayaking we would probably get wet... because he thought it was going to rain. Mom and I looked at each other, kind of shrugged our shoulders and said.. oh well, we might get a little wet... since we often wore our bathing suits kayaking getting a little wet was no big deal. So... we started paddling up the river... we headed into one of the small ponds that goes off from the river, we named Tadpole Terrace. (Because the tadpoles gather near the surface of the pond to be in the warmth of the sun... and as you paddle your kayak through the water, the tadpoles get startled and literally jump out of the water... and it startles me and perhaps I scream a little... well not really scream... squeal is a little more accurate... and Mom got such a kick out of it. That was the part of our excursions where the most tadpoles were found, so the name, Tadpole Terrace was coined. Ironically the beavers built a dam after mom died and accessing tadpole terrace is no longer possible...) Anyway... Mom and I paddled into tadpole terrace and as we normally did each started paddling in slightly different directions, quietly, seeing what we could see and enjoying the peace of coasting on the water. we ended up each circling the pond in opposite directions and when our kayaks crossed paths we were in the most open part of the pond and we talked about noticing that the sky had darkened a bit. All of a sudden we heard it... and it grew louder... we looked at each other, then looked towards the sound and we saw it coming... not drops, not sheets... a huge WALL of rain, coming right at us. We both had the same idea, head for cover! We both paddled towards a beautiful old tree whose branches extend over the pond under which I have paddled many times. Mom and I got under the branches, hoping for protection, and backed our kayaks up against the bank of the pond and laid our paddles across the kayaks. The rain was so loud we couldn't even hear each other talk unless we shouted. The branches offered some protection, but we were getting soaked... I looked at mom, rain pouring off her face, and she looked at me... and we both just started laughing... we laughed so hard that day... and we could barely hear each other's laughs, but that made us laugh even harder. before long the rain stopped, the sun peeked out, and we started paddling. We had both accumulated a little rain inside our kayaks (we do not use those fancy kayak skirts, and the opening of our kayaks are pretty big.) Si we started paddling our way out of tadpole terrace...and instead of returning to the campground, we kept going up the river to see what other adventures we could find.

After a while we heard the motor of a boat and my dad had come up the river to check on us. He found us and after making sure we were okay, hadn't drowned in the rainstorm, shook his head at us, turned his boat around and headed back down the river.

When mom and I did return to the campground, the other people camping there, who we have known for years, told us we looked a little wet and thought we were pretty foolish... but... we had a great adventure that day, and WOW... the memory we made was well worth it!

I miss you mom. I miss the time taken from us, but cherish every minute we had together.