Somehow, each year is always like the last when it comes to "remembering" my mother. Whether it be her birthday or the anniversary of her death, I'm always left feeling a certain way, a way that in no way involves closure. Out of all the dates and all the loved ones, her dates are the ones that are forever etched in my mind. July 2nd, June 5th, and today, May 31st. I can still remember words and actions, and reactions, yet, I still can't remember her voice or her smell - those things aren't brought back by time or through photographs - apparently, neither is healing. I don't really know when I'll ceased to be affected in this way.

For the first time in a long time, I was able to take some flowers up to the cemetery on one of her actual dates. And for the first time in a long time, I didn't cry. Not because I no longer needed to, but because I had Miss J with me. It was a very quick visit, I couldn't risk losing it in front of the baby, she wouldn't fully understand, or maybe I'd like to think that she wouldn't understand so that she wouldn't be left with the task of comforting me. I was once comforted by a complete stranger on one of my cemetery visits, although I'd much rather be comforted by my grandmother, but she refuses to visit the my mother's grave with me. I try to understand why.

There isn't anything left to say except that I am affected the same in year 18, as I was in year 1.

When you lose your parent(s) before you have formed your own identity, do you ever recover?

One of your readers reminds you that its your blogoversary!!

Thanks Teena in Toronto of Its All About Me.

Who knows what would happen to this place if nobody came by to check in on me from time to time. Its true. A Place of Comfort has official been on the scene for a whole year. Doesn't seem like it (perhaps because I've been slacking), but the calendar doesn't lie. I first hit the Publish Post button and introduced myself with this post on July 19th, 2008. Since then, that button and I have become friends, and so have a number of amazingly beautiful and talented women. I am grateful for the space and opportunity to just be me and to be supported along the way. I am looking forward to branching out more within this special space and I hope that all of you will continue the journey with me.

On to the next 364 days...

May 31, 1992. The day I lost my mother. My, how time does fly. How could it have been 17 years ago when it still feels like it happened yesterday? I will never forget sitting in a chair in the living room of my mother's apartment watching the paramedics carry her from her bedroom into the living room to be placed on a stretcher. I will never forget my family sneaking me into my mother's hospital room and sometimes having to argue with the nurses "this is her daughter, she needs to be with her mother". Rules are rules, no children allowed on certain floors, but I always got in. I will never forget the pain on my grandmother's face and the tears in her eyes as she came out to the waiting room and simply said, "she's gone". As I sat on my aunt's lap, I didn't know what that meant. I was only 8 years old. I didn't know the pain and tears that my grandmother had that day were the expression of a mother's loss of her first born, and I didn't know that I too, would feel similar pain, that would be shown in expressions of my own.

I will never forget the small funeral home that held my mother's body. The little place that sat right on the outskirts of my hood. I will always remember walking from my house to that little place and sitting with my mother as she lay in her casket. I will never forget the chill of her hand as I stroked a scar that lay there. What I do not remember is the warmth of her breath, the sound of her voice or the happiness of her laughter. I can't even remember the smell of her fragrance. Perhaps 8 years old was too young for me to know that I should tuck these things away deep in my memory. Perhaps I did tuck them deeply away and pain does not allow me to retrieve them. I don't really know, I just know that I do not have access to them anymore and I wish that I still did.

Unless you have lost a parent as a young child you could never understand that experience. Its not the same experience as growing up with an absent parent. With an absent parent, there is always the possibility of that parent's return. No, the death of a parent is truly a life changing experience, on so many different levels, and it is one of those events in life that shape your very existence. Or at least, it has truly shaped mine. As a child, I questioned God daily about why my mother wasn't allowed to exist. About why "I" had to be drastically different than every other 8 year old that I knew. I can't say that I got an answer to that question, but I did gain more understanding over the years about the time that my mother did exist.

Although I have been missing and grieving my mother for 17 whole years, in a way she is still with me. After her death her energy was still with me for a while. Her cigarette smoke would surround me, my touch-lamp would flicker. But then those things stopped and I felt that she had left me indefinitely. Indefinitely, until her cigarette smoke surrounded me again during a lecture at Cal, and nine months later I gave birth to a little girl, on the same date that my mother was buried.

Time flies, wounds remain fresh...