April 9thI wonder if there will be a year that will finally arive when I don't look at this day on a calendar and break into tears as I see it is coming up.
This week's topic has had me thinking, what is an ideal day for me?
With school, work, a husband, a teenage daughter, homework, writing, editing, housework, revisions, graphics to do, websites to update, and so on and so forth, what is my idea of an ideal day?
Then I look at the calendar again, and start crying.
Why?
Because two years ago today I lost my mother-in-law. And while I know I should have not gotten along with her so well, since my husband was the baby of the family, she often told him if it came down to me or him, she'd keep me.
God how I loved that woman. How I still love her. How I wish I had told her so many things, the first of which is my big secret - I write!
She died not knowing my greatest secret, my passion. I write erotic romance. She died without sharing the joys of my little hobby ... because I also feared her responce. I feared the dissapointment and the rejection that might come ...
She will never see my graduate, never hug me again. Never see my daughter do so many things ... Already, the memories my daughter has of her are fading.
I want to say so very much that my ideal day is being able to sit and write when I want, to watch TV with my family, to simply enjoy life as it comes without having to be aware of the ticking of the clock and where we all need to be at certain times. To live each moment like it might be my last.
But in the end, it all comes back to one thing. My ideal day is to not feel this damnable void inside of me, the longing to pick up the phone and bitch to her about my classes, or to hear her scandalized voice when she tells me about the latest news article about just where people are getting pierced, or to have her whisper softly "are you and my son swingers?"
I can go several days at a time now, without forgetting. I used to not make it a day. I'd dial her number to talk to her about classes or whatever was on my mind, before the pain hit - she's gone.
I was never really close to my mother. Screw oil and water. She and I are like ammonia and bleach - apart we are fine, together we are toxic. To each other, and to everyone around us.
But my mother-in-law was different, and I resent not having more time with her. I hate the world that so many who are truly evil still live and she, who was a nurse, a loving wife and mother, and a woman who lived to laugh and who never hurt a dang person, is gone.
So my ideal day ...
Yeah, it's not to feel this pain inside, that is so deep it has become a permenant part of me.
But I also don't want to forget ...
So I let the tears fall as they must, and I remember the laughter, and the joy and the sorrow and the pain.
I hope my ideal day never comes.
