I want to live fully. I don’t want to take things for granted. I want to enjoy moments, those amazing little moments, with Keilee. Because really..isn’t that what it is all about?

Today is my Daddy’s birthday. He is in Florida for 2 months, enjoying the weather. I am sitting here on this unseasonably warm February day horribly missing my Mother. Missing her voice, her laugh, her smell, her hugs, her presence. I am in her house, the house she made into a home hoping, praying, that I am doing the same for Keilee.

She has been gone for almost 4 years.

It seems like yesterday…

It seems like forever ago…

Every day I was safe in the knowledge that she loved me. Adored me. Ours was the house where the neighborhood kids hung out.  No one left my Mother’s house without a “Jean Goodie Bag”. †She would take a baggie and fill it with candy and Little Debbies and gum.  Every child that visited us left with a goodie bag grasped tightly in their hand.

Kids would get measured on our laundry room wall.  There are years and years of measurements there….almost 40 years… She measured Keilee up until she was 7, then was unable to do it again. I carefully mark her height and feel such a connection to my Mother. I know she is watching me, smiling that I am carrying on her tradition.  The wall needs painting so badly and I wouldnít paint over it for $20,000.

This is only 1/2 of it. I can’t back up enough in the tiny laundry room to get the entire wall…

She loved me unconditionally.† I never really understood that until I had Keilee.  How many times I would say to her, “Mom I love those earrings, bowl, picture” and she would answer, “It’s yours”. Keilee says to me, “Mom I love those earrings” and I say, “They’re yours” and I smile.

Her joke was to kiss something when I borrowed it.† She was “kissing it goodbye”.  I smile as I type that and my eyes tear up “missing” does it ever really leave us?

She called me every single morning I lived in California to make sure I was up for work. We watched the airplane crash into the 2^nd tower together; her in Alabama, me in California.

She would call me every night to tell me “Goodnight my babe”.† After she got Caller ID, she answered the phone when I called †”Hello sweetie”. What I wouldnít give for one more of those calls.

She loved me, drove me crazy at times, taught me to be a better woman, slipped me her credit card to buy clothes, kissed boo boos, sacrificed, loved fiercely, called to tell me it was raining outside, woke me up every morning of my school life whispering, “Good morning sunshine”, cheered my successes, cried with me for my mistakes.† †She was a great Mother.

4 years ago this month she began getting really sick.  Did I fight enough for her? Keilee and I spent February through May either at the hospital, rehabilitation, or at her house.  I talked, sang, brushed her hair, brought her favorite things, made her food she loved, kissed her, stroked her face, read to her, laughed with her, talked to doctors, did research, asked a million questions

and she still died….

They never knew exactly what was wrong with her.† They called it “Failure to Thrive”.  I was appalled at that.† No one ever wanted to live like my Mother did.†

I miss you Mother.† Every day.†

Every

single

day.

I wish Keilee and I could spend one more day, week, month, year, decade with you.

One day we will…

Karen

“Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle
Everything I do is stitched with its color.”
~W.S. Merwin, “Separation”

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” ~Kahlil Gibran