Tutti

The calendar tells me it's been 17 years, but the pings in my heart tells me that she's been gone much longer. It's a milestone that I never wanted to reach, and when I realized that I would be one of the unfortunate ones that would have that notch on my proverbial life belt, I refused to believe it would come this fast.

But it has.

The day my mom passed would normally come and go, just as any other day. The sun would rise and the sun would set regardless of the empty pocket in my soul. But this day is earmarked just for her. To remember her, to honor her. To laugh at her, and to miss her.

But this year took more than a day. It took weeks.

For over two weeks, heck, maybe even longer, it hovered around me like cigarette smoke in a billiard hall. Every thought led back to her, something she had done, or what she would have said. There were obvious reminders, and subtle triggers....the ones that sidle up to you without warning, emerging from every corner, tapping you on the shoulder when you thought you had other things on your mind.

I remember getting a card from one of my dearest best friends when she passed away. The front of the card read "Time will ease your pain". Time hasn't done anything for my pain at all. All time has done is made her laugh faint in my mind, the sound of her voice fade, and the smell of her perfume unfamiliar. I missed her more this year than I had any year, any day, in the last 17.

I felt like I was grieving for her all over again. Except this time was worse.

I'm sure I'm no different than anyone else that's lost their mother young. You reach these milestones and her absence is painfully obvious. Either consciously or subconsciously, you once imagine all of the important milestones you will reach in your life, and expect her to be there. And when she's not, not only are you mourning what was lost, but you're also mourning what will never be.

I missed my mom when I got my drivers license and had no one to take a cruise with. Or when I graduated college, or when I got my first job promotion and wanted to make her proud with the news. I miss her when I'm sick, or when I can't remember what works best on insect bites, or when no one else cares how rude the lady at the supermarket was to me. Whether she would have made me homemade chicken noodle soup or mailed me Calamine lotion and cotton balls if she were alive isn't really the issue. The fact that I can't even ask her for them is what makes me miss her all over again.

And now....now I have officially lived longer without her than with her. There's a sad beauty to this really, that my mom will remain forever young in my mind. I'll never have to watch her grow old or worry about her care during old age. But it also means I'll pass her before long. Up until this point my adolescence and hers were strikingly similar: we loved our parents but disagreed with them, took tests in public high schools, and fell in love. But I married at twenty and the choices she made at that age -- to remain single and go on to college -- are the ones that have separated our adult experiences.

Truthfully, my friends whose mothers are still alive can say the same thing. Daughters often surpass their mothers. That's just fact. But many of my achievements have been tinged with bittersweet because they're things my mother only hoped to accomplish but didn't' get the time to do. I graduated college, have visited foreign countries. I attended my sister's wedding and watched her children being born. I saw the first day of a new century. And one day, I'll turn 40.

More than anything I mourn who she would have been in my life today. I know at some point we would have crossed a threshold of Mother-and-Daughter, to a Best Friend relationship. There are times when I'm around my best friend and her mom and am green with envy. Jealousy consuming my whole body and wanting that relationship so badly with my own mom. Instantly I think about how things would be if she were alive today. I know she would come over in the mornings for a cup of coffee. She'd sit at my kitchen table with her steaming cup of coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other, bouncing her prosthetic leg up and down. What would we talk about? What kind of advice would she give me? Would she tell me I'm a good mom? Would she give me a better recipe for zucchini bread? Shopping plans, charity projects, overnight visits for the kids?

For nearly 13 years I have been looking at my mother as if she were a mirror -- a place to go when I need a benchmark of my progress as a mom. I look at her and try to identify the similarities and differences between us maternally. But I realize I'm working with limited material. On one hand, I'm comparing myself to a thirty-nine-year-old Tutti I know very little about, and on the other hand, I'm comparing myself to a woman that never ages. When I turned nineteen, she was thirty-nine. And now I'm thirty-three, and she's still thirty-nine. My mother will remain older and more experienced than me for only 6 more years. Then what? Who will I compare myself to then? Yes, I have maternal instincts. But when I doubt those, my fail safe has always been "what would Mom do here?". So many things I have done with my own children simply because that's what my mom did with me. The way I discipline, having the kids lay their school clothes out before going to bed, leaving them notes in inconspicuous places. What will happen when I need to talk to them about sex, or help them learn how to drive? Who will I compare myself to when I'm wedding dress shopping with my daughter? How will I know I'm doing it right?

I can say that I truly believe that God has a plan. He may have taken my mom young, probably to spare her the pain and agony of living so sickly, but He also gave me my Grandma. In many ways she IS my mom. And who knows....maybe I wouldn't have had the incredible relationship with her if my mom were still alive. Or the other numerous people that have willingly stepped in to fill her shoes in my life.

I have also come to realize that there is no timeline for the grieving process. No one can say "in 22 days you will be over it" or "hang in there, this time three years from now you won't feel a thing". It takes time...lots of time.