It cuts.
Grief.
It digs in, the point of the knife sometimes just rests there, you know it's around - other times it slices right into your skin, powerfully, deep into your gut.
In just six days I'll wake up and it will have been two years.
Two. Years.
She was here and then she wasn't. She cried tears and then she didn't. She laughed, and then, she didn't.
I'm diving back into my book this week. I'm diving in and I'm not coming up for air until the thing is either: accepted by an agent, or finished or both. I'm not sure.
And it hurts, it hurts so good and so bad and yet I have to. I have to go back to those places. I have to go back to the bad, the places that tore me clear in half. But also? Also I get to go back to the good.
Because though it's easy to talk of her death, of the cancer that ate away at her. About the death, it's easy to talk of the death.
It's also easy to forget the life. The thirty years I had with her before she got sick. So many good years. So many nights of laughing until we peed our pants. So many days of simply having her in my life. So many times I took her for granted.
There is a lot to her death, to the year I lost her. But there is a lot to her life, all the years I had her.
And I get to write about those too. I have the honor, of writing about those.
She was such a beautiful and caring soul, my mom. She had quirks too, like talking with her hands and breaking too abruptly in the car. But she loved, oh how she loved. She would give the shirt off of her back, and no matter who you were, you stepped foot in her house, she was already cooking for you.
I've invested a lot of my time and energy into Faces of Grief - because she inspired it, but maybe also so I can avoid all of the feelings that come with a death-iversary.
I don't know. I do know that my commitment to finishing this book puts me smack back into all the feels. Necessary but often times hard. Okay, okay, always hard. Even the good stuff is hard to remember, because it hurts too.
If your mama is still around, do me a favor, and let her know how much she means to you. If you aren't on the best of terms, fix that. I know, I know, sometimes that's easier said than done. But this life, it's so fleeting. Our days, they're blessings but never guaranteed.
We have to do our best with what we're given, choose love always, and make the very best who and what we're a part of.
Amen? Amen.