You'd better start running!

I wanted to post this before I forgot it because it is so funny!  I was on the way home from work this evening.  I was going into our local Walgreens to pick up my prescription.  Hubby knew I was on my way home soon and that I'd be hungry for dinner so he sent me this text:

I didn't make dinner...I ate leftovers...And your chocolate...

How he survived the night is beyond me.  :) Must be some miracle.  He is a mighty brave soul going after a girl's chocolate and finishing it off!

But on the serious, this is just one reason I love my hubby.  Simple little things that make me laugh when I don't even feel like smiling.  He's always knows just when I need him to do that somehow.

The Living Years

This post is coming from a day of missing. I am missing my mama. So much it hurts. I am missing my siblings whom I have not seen in too long to count. And I am even missing my father and stepfather, both of whom I have not seen since my mama passed away nearly twelve years ago. Yikes! Where has the time gone. What has happened in life that was so important that I could not make the time to make sure they know how much I love them.

I remember the day I got the call in the late evening at work. The call that I'd better rush down to Arizona. Mama was in the hospital and her kidneys were not working and they didn't know how long she might have. So off we went after the graveyard shift - my wonderful husband and his very emotional and scared wife. We made it to Arizona two days later and saw my mama in the hospital doing better but still not knowing what in the world had caused such a medical emergency. We stayed as long as we could and then headed back home. And then on the way home we did our layover with my uncle, mom's younger brother, in Reno and I heard the words that have changed my life that day and every day since. My uncle had the most unenviable position of telling his niece that her mama and his sister was dying. Dying. Not fixable. She was not going to make it through this. But she had to. She had to. But not this time. It just wasn't possible with the diagnosis of Multiple Myeloma. She had, at best, six to eight months. Roughly 180-240 days of life left. How do you wrap your mind around this? I am not sure I remember just how I did.

She was, and is, my hero. My mentor. My life giver. My champion. My mommy. My cuddler. My enabler. My best friend. I miss her so much. Every day. There has not been a day that goes by that I don't wish her back with me. I feel happy, sad, angry, robbed. My mom passed away at 11:45pm on Saturday, November 4, 2000. She was 45 years old and 32 days. So young. So beautiful. She did not want to die. She never did. Who does? But especially when you are coming into your own as a woman. Your kids are finally grown and doing well and the grandbabies are being born. By all definitions, this is the time of your life. And then you are sick. And then you pass away.

I feel broken and lost without her. I feel guilty that I am losing my grasp of her laugh and her smell. And how she felt in my arms when we hugged or cuddled. You see, my mom and I were so much more than mother and daughter. We were the same person just born twenty years apart. We thought the same. We called each other at the same time a lot. "Why was your phone busy just now?" she'd ask. "I was trying to call you!" I would reply with an unexpected hint of surprise and slight sarcasm in my voice. I was twenty-five years old when my mom left me - not even close to done with her job. I also was nowhere near done needing her in my life with her sage, yet sometimes misguided, advice and her unconditional love. I could do no wrong in my mom's eyes. And isn't that the best part of having a mom? I think it has to be. Who else will hold your hair back while you toss cookies or carry you oh so gently toward a waiting bath because you woke up quietly from your nap as a precocious eighteen month old and proceeded to smear your filled diaper (not containing the aforementioned cookies of course) throughout your hair and face and on the walls, etc. laughing about it as she carried out the task. And who else but the woman who carried me and gave me life could console a scared and overemotional bride on her wedding day or cry as she accepted her diploma beaming with pride the entire time. And who else would sit by your side when you are nineteen years old and about to be married while the doctor tells you that the reason you are in her office and not growing up as you should is because you have this certain birth defect, which oh by the way means you will never be able to have kids. Who else would cry over this more than you yourself had or have since?  Or who else but my mom could make me know for a certainty that no one would every love me as much as she had and in the way she had? She did every day she was alive. And for that, I shall forever be grateful. So many children never get that. I never for one nanosecond doubted how much my mom adored and treasured me in her life. She told me so all the time. Thank you mom. For everything.

She always told me how thankful she was to God for choosing her to be my mom. Wow! How incredible is that? And as senior in high school, she had this poem posted in my yearbook with my baby photo - 

"Tawnya May - Good things come in small packages, this is true. But this small package is even more special because it contains you. Always be happy. Love, Mom" 

I will never forget those words. And mom, I am happy. Truly happy. I just wish you were here to see the woman I've become. The woman you raised. I know you would be proud. 

A quote from our book, Love You Forever.

"I love you forever. I like you for always. As long as I'm living, my mommy you'll be." 

Wedding Day, 1995.  A special moment and favorite photo that is priceless to me.

The baby photo pubished in my senior yearbook with the poem she wrote me as mentioned above.  How cute am I?  Gotta love me!  She also included this in a baby photo album she gave to my hubby before we got married.  She told him she wanted to share a "piece of her heart" with him and how "God knows she's a big piece of my heart."  Aww.  You are a big piece of my heart, too, mama.  And it isn't whole without you here!

Everything I love most about my mother is in this photo.  And if you really knew her, you'd understand why I say this.  Here she is with two of her precious granddaughters.  She of course loved them way more than us.  And we know it.

A beautiful preteen and future wonderful mother of five wonderful children - four girls and one boy.

  

Graduation Day 1993.  A great moment in time!  Love our matching smiles.

One of my favorite childhood photos of mom. She is so adorable.  And see those dimples in her smile?  I got those!

My twenty year older twin, Sandra Kaye.  Love the glasses and cream sweater. I especially love her dimples and kitty cat pin on the turtleneck.  This is definitely something I would wear!

Flash forward to the younger Sandra Kaye, aka Tawnya May: Similar pose, same dimples, same shaped glasses and similar cream colored turtleneck! 

Thanks for joining me on this walk down memory lane. Sometimes it helps so much just to feel your way through it and let yourself be in he moment. If you are a mama with baby girls, I pray you have the relationship I had, and still have, with my mama.  It's a once in a lifetime miracle.

We made it!

Yay! Either I am dreaming or we have made it through our first winter in Alaska. I have never been so happy to see springtime in my whole life! By all accounts, it was a record breaking winter. Now the mountains are beginning to reemerge and the ice is melting and what the locals call "Breakup" is well underway. The days are getting longer and warmer and spring has definitely arrived.

We moved into our own place the beginning of March. It is a older place that needs A LOT of work and is a far cry from the home we sold when leaving Oregon. But never have four walls and a roof meant so much to me in my entire life. I am so beyond thankful for this home it is had to express in words. I definitely wouldn't have made a good Israelite. After one year of a nomadic type life, I was beyond done three months before it was. So we are settled, or so it seems, here in Alaska. Let's hope the next winter holds off a few weeks :)