The loss of a mother

My father sold his house and is in the midst of moving out.  We had dinner with most of the family there last night and the movers are coming on Wednesday.  I looked around at the house that he and my mother build and realize that it felt like the last thing on earth I had of her.

I laid on the floor in the room where she died and I sobbed.   She built that house; she moved walls.  She picked all the colors.  She planned out the last house she every wanted to live in.  She did not know how quickly she would die.  Mommy planned the house for grandkids and family reunions.  She planned it for old age.  She died in our home, with her family around her- just like she wanted, 30 years to soon.

The house is too big, too much for my widowed father.  I don’t even like the house itself that much to be honest.  Somehow dad moving out feels like losing her all over again.   I laid on the floor last night, right where mommy’s death bed had been and sobbed.  I remembered her voice “I love you baby girl” and “goodnight, sweet dreams, God bless you, I love you.”   I could almost hear her telling me how proud she was of our family, the family we are building, the children she has never met.  I could almost feel her stroke my hair back and whisper to me “It’ll be ok baby girl.”

My mommy is dead, buried, gone.  She cannot hold me or comfort me.  She cannot move forward with us.  I believe I will see her again- but right now that is cold cold comfort for a child who just wants her mommy.

We drove home last night in the dark to our home.  The house we are filling with memories right now and building our family in right now.  The first house C will remember and hopefully the first house Z will remember. We drove home and my grief was still bubbling over and spilling out with random tear drops in the dark.

It hit me, like when you are swimming in the ocean and a wave tumbles you into the ocean floor so hard you think you’ll never know what way is up again and might actually drown.  Z will grow up with the grief I am feeling.  It doesn’t matter if we LOVE Z more than life and how much we want to make it all better.  Z has already lost her first mom.  I will be Z’s mommy, but I cannot heal that wound.

I hope our love, our family and time will bring Z the solace and the confidence Z will need to heal herself.  Loss and grief follow you though.  My mother’s death is NOT exactly like the loss of Z’s first mother, but I hope and pray that my loss will help me be the best mommy to Z I can be.

I don’t know what it is like to be an adopted child.  I do know what it is like to grieve your mother.  Please please Lord let that help me not hinder me in raising my newest child.

~M