10. Hope Floats
Beginnings are scary.
Endings are usually sad,
but it’s what’s in the
middle that counts.
So, when you find yourself
at the beginning,
just give hope a chance to float up.
It will.
My family is facing a beginning — a world without me in it. It dawned on me in the wee hours this morning that this event in my life will be far worse for them.
My mother will be losing a child. Sure, I’m in my sixties, but I am her child, nonetheless. I’m the one who has pushed all of her buttons over the years, and the one who has brought her to fits of laughter in nearly every one of our conversations.
My older brother and younger sister will be losing the kid in the middle. The one who marched to her own beat, was really good at keeping secrets, and who felt fortunate to have clowns to the left and jokers to the right.
My husband will be losing one half of the bickering couple. Good Lord, we bickered, but we never really had huge fights — we had huge laughs together. I could bring that man to tears with my antics. When he moves through the grieving process, the one I assume will be an emotional torture trip of ‘what ifs’ and regrets of ‘doing or not doing’ this thing or that thing, I hope he will remember the laughter because there was so much laughter in our lives.
My daughters will be losing their mother. Their impending pain and loneliness hurts me to my core because that is where they live — in the center of my heart and soul. I love my two girls and would give anything to stay with them. I hope the women in my life, my sister and sisters-in-law, and my friends and my girls’ friends will reach out and help them find a place for their grief as they find their way back to happiness.
Please find your way back to happiness.
And finally, my darling granddaughter will be losing her MammyGrams. This loss will hit her hard. I have had the blessing of being with her every day of her life — imparting little nuggets of wisdom, and writing silly poems and songs, and yelling the word, ‘monkey’ for absolutely no reason. I know she will wish things were different, and she will hurt as she tries to understand why they are not. And I know she will miss me dearly — and I ache in ways that are almost too much to bear.
I pray that those I leave behind will remind Hadley that she can find me in the place she touched me most — in her heart.