Dear Mom,
It was your birthday on the 8th. I spent most of my day thinking of you. In recent weeks, months, my feelings have become more moderate. I am able to generally get through the day without too much anguish. For your birthday, I was on my honeymoon in San Francisco.
I made a decision that I think I will do forever after now: I will have Ben and Jerry's and a Starbucks to celebrate. We have a picture of you, taken a few months before you got cancer, sitting outside eating a B+J's ice cream and drinking a Starbucks coffee. It is one of my favorite pictures of you, because you look so happy. Smiling. Those were two of your vices, I think, once you took that healthy diet/life change and cut out some of those "unnecessary" calories. So Tim and I got a Starbucks coffee for me, and we both had some Ben and Jerry's. Tim took a picture of me posing with these things. So everyday for your birthday, we'll eat that.
I was happy on your birthday. It was a day of happy memories, glad times and while somewhat sad since you weren't there for me to call.
Your headstone was finally finished, and has since been placed over your grave. You would like it, I think. It has musical notes and a rose on there held with two hands as if in prayer. It was something dad worked on, and it is perfect.
I haven't felt you around me in the last few months. This could be because I'm starting to finally accept your death, or maybe it's because I'm handling things better. I sometimes still laugh because I seem to see you in strange places. You'll sometimes turn off my radio if I hear a song that makes me sad or think of you and cry, and I say thank you. I am handling things better now than I used to. I think all of us are, though I worry a lot about the people I love.
As usual things are always changing. I try to tell myself that it is OK and that I can handle life without you, even though I hate it. My grieving has changed a little in the last six months. Your half year mark left me feeling depressed and sullen. People who knew me were concerned. So they asked me what they could do, and I told them why I was sullen. They just said they understood (the woman in particular I am talking about lost her mother a few years ago as well, and understood better than most).
It is weird to feel happy. It is truthful happiness, and not the fake stuff I usually do. I am truthfully happy, and that is so unlikely and so unusual that I don't know what to do with myself. Anyway. That has been my life. So take care up there in Heaven, and know that we down here still love and miss you everyday.
I love you, forever and always.
Love,
Christy
