We celebrated A’s 18th birthday yesterday, which was nice if not a bit low-key with my full day of doing new clinician training and then two siblings away at camp. We’ll be spreading that celebrating out over this week and next. Birthdays are always somewhat bittersweet now without Kendall there to mark and celebrate them, and 18 is a big milestone birthday (can I really have an adult child now?!?!). Today, though, has been emotional for me for different reasons.
Today is my mom’s birthday. She would have been 64. I know that picture wasn’t taken on my mom’s birthday, but I’ve had birthdays on the brain here. I wrote in a post while Kendall was sick about the amazing birthday cakes Mom made for her grandchildren. So many for my kids over the years – the tool cake for my son with real mini tools that we still use, a waterfall cake with actual mermaid figurines, a train with each car filled with a different type of candy, a Zootopia cake, a castle, a cake that looked like books (one guess which child that was for, ha), a “surprise” cake that was completely filled with candy that spilled out when it was cut, C’s owl cake (Love My Mama – Still Being Smelted)…. Mom also helped with numerous kid birthday parties and made personalized homemade gifts for each grandchild every year (stuffed animals, towels, pillows, bags, bed caddies, etc.) and she made me a special birthday dinner and dessert on my birthday.
After Mom and Dad moved to Utah, for her birthday she and I would usually go out to lunch and/or go shopping together. (Although if you had asked her I’m sure she would have said that the best present I ever gave her was the year I made her a grandmother just 32 minutes before her own birthday.) I have many fond memories of the long conversations we had over those lunches. Sometimes I’d introduce her to some place new that I had tried and thought she’d like, sometimes it was new for both of us; we both liked branching out and trying new things (unlike our husbands, who would find something they liked and then want to stick with it every time). We liked shopping together at home decor stores, picking out plants, or going clothes shopping. Mom had an uncanny eye for recognizing things I’d like, and I’m picky; I talk about how good she was at that in a missionary letter, when I was describing the trip to Utah she took for my 20th birthday. I was pretty good at finding things she would like, too.
I’ve had some grieving I needed to do today, tears that needed to come out and a heaviness in my chest I hadn’t been fully cognizant of but now recognize has been building and needed to be released. Similar to what I did with Kendall’s texts, this morning I went and read through all of the texts between Mom and me from the beginning of Covid until her passing. It was of course emotional reading about things from Kendall’s illness, or when I texted to say that he was gone (Covid, remember, so she and the kids had to leave the hospital after their brief good-byes). But also texts that alluded to her own illness and treatments and steadily declining health. And throughout it all the amazing support she gave me and my family.
I did know this intellectually, but it was striking seeing just how much she helped me that year after Kenny died, how involved she was with the kids, how she quietly ministered to me in so many ways. I still stand firm in my belief that Heavenly Father prolonged her life because He knew how very much I needed her during that dark time. And like it was after reading the texts between Kenny and me, I’m now more aware of the gaping hole that exists in the absence of that support. This was a really, really hard school year, and there have been many times I’ve felt like I was barely keeping my head above water. Lots of things that had to be dropped in light of the grief, the not having another adult to tag-team and act as a surrogate parent, attempting to balance kids’ needs and work, everything with A’s health.
So yes, I’ve shed some tears today and am feeling more reflective than usual. But happy birthday, Mom. You are missed, and oh so loved.
A wonderful sweet amazing woman. I am glad you took some time to grieve and reflect, a wonderful way to honor her memory. Of course you miss her she was your mother, your support, your rock especially though all the hard times and you don’t have her physically here with you now. I know she is still present and watching over you and your children. Thank you for sharing she was an example to us all