Missing Mom

We had a wonderful few days of Christmas celebrations.  I finished up baking on Christmas Eve.  My dad and Patty joined us for birthday cake, mass, and dinner.  We put out cookies and milk for Santa, wrapped presents and set everything out.  The kids loved everything they received, with a yo-yo making the top 3 for James.  It's so funny what they end up liking the most.  Everyone is enjoying the used Wii, the sports games are a big hit.  Christmas day was great with Jon's parents and some friends over.  We enjoyed mostly just relaxing and chatting.  It was a different Christmas day, but it was really nice.

Today was mostly a day of recovery, the kids played with their new things and I tried to figure out what to do with some of my retirement accounts.  But this afternoon we started some of the cleaning out that needs to be done.  During this I pulled everything out of the overflowing magazine rack that holds the kids' drawing stuff.  I asked them to go through everything (they aren't done yet).  Carolyn did a great job looking through things and deciding what she wants to keep.

While Carolyn was going through the large pile, she came across the speech a good friend made at mom's funeral.  Just reading the first few words I knew it was from Marianne.  Tears filled my eyes without even reading it.  I set it to the side and finished working on the pile in front of me.  Then I sat down to read it through and reminisce on the wonderful relationship they had.  I was reminded of my wonderful mother and saddened that she can't be here to watch my children grow up.  I was reminded of some of the great friendships my mom developed and part of me longs to develop some of those types of relationships.  Now that the kids are growing it should get easier.  Mostly today, I miss my mom.  Much of the holiday season is filled with memories of her as I bake the same things she baked (with tweaks to make them gluten free) and the house is filled even more with reminders of her.  I know she's watching us from heaven and I know she is so proud of her grandchildren.  But it's still hard that I can't call her on the phone, that I can't give her a hug, that James and Carolyn will never feel her warm embrace.

And then there's reality of my own unknown future.  As we near a new year, I see some challenges with my own health that lie ahead.  The headaches that plagued me this fall have gone away, which is excellent.  But the dizziness is still strong and I can't figure out how to get rid of it.  I have to work this year to not only lose the weight I was working on in August, but the extra weight from 3 months of restaurant food.  Hopefully that can relieve the joint aches and the dizziness.  I'll go low sugar again starting next Thursday.  And hopefully I'll see the changes I need.  Thinking about my mom always reminds me of how young she was and I was when she passed away.  Of course, if I make it to 57 James would be 30 since I just have the 2 kids and we started young.  But I would still miss a lot.  Maybe if I can lose a good amount of this weight I'll even head into the doctor this summer to start a relationship back up.  For now I need to take things into my own hands and do what I know needs to be done to start feeling better.  The first step is to start getting better sleep.  So off to bed I will be in a short bit.

I love you, Mom.  Thanks for watching over us.