I thought today I would have a minute to sit down and write you a note. I have thought that almost everyday for awhile now. Time is flying past faster than I ever imagined happening. With that realization is also all the other things I still desire to accomplish in my lifetime; the books to read, the instruments to pick up and play, the gardens to plant and tend, the dresses to sew, the songs to sing or hear, the recipes to try, the birdhouses to build and the adobe hut to create for hiding away in. They are all slipping through my fingers like an ocean wave or the wet sand below it. How will I ever get to do it all in what is left of 1/2 a lifetime-being generous with my remaining years.
My humanity has simply caught up to me. In tending to others I have lost myself so many times. It brings me to my mother’s words. She, as a child, wanted to learn to dance, ballet was her choice, I believe is how the story went. Her father, worring about the status of her health gave her the requirement of gaining weight before she could begin. She being a skinny, busy kid, was not able to meet the measure he set, therefore never pursuing her dream to dance. Now she will move on without knowing that love, yet not complaining, only relating the memory. She loved so much in its place.
Surely she does not regret her loves. I am sure of this because every time we spoke her thoughts were not on dance but “how was so and so?” She asked me to care for “my babies” as she passes the torch to the next in the relay of life. Will all the turbulence between us for so many years, I can truly say she is the only one who every loved me completely- wholly- entirely, from start to finish. Although, I did not always understand her ways. I always knew she loved me. AlwaysSo as I grieve her leaving me, please forgive my tardiness, my emotional outburst of pain, and my downright dreadful ache. I will continue as her example set the path. Continue and go forward and continue on some more.
But it hurts,…. so I may pause from time to time. Then I will recall the path of love she set for me to follow.
Lover of everyone.
very moving.