.

Daughters have been losing their mothers for thousands of years. Yet, when it happens to you, it feels like this must be the first time. The only time. Surely no one has felt this pain and survived. No one has felt this pain and gotten up the next day to a sun that says you have to keep going, and did that, in the clear of all that light, kept going…but they have and they did, and they do. And I want to tell her that I am one of them, just as she is now. And I want to tell her – this sister-in-law of mine – that it gets better, but does it? What is this better? I’m not sure what that even means. And it’s hard to make sense of anything… and certainly if I could make sense, how could she even hear it? Because nothing makes sense when the one that gave you life, and not just on one day, but again and again, is no longer living. The woman that dabbed skinned knees with a touch that no one else could master…who will now touch that heart that feels scraped raw? And I want to tell her you get stronger, and you do, but even typing the words I have to take my fingers from the keyboard and hold my own heart. And I am not even a thousand days away from this, what women have been doing for thousands of years, what she has been doing now for thousands of minutes.

And I have reread my mother’s emails a thousand times. And reached for the phone as many. And tears have fallen 7 x 1000. And that sun keeps rising. And I keep painting and writing. And hugging and laughing. And walking and loving. And learning. And with these thousands of daughters, and sons, all living with this missing, I, we, have found that it is possible, carrying this hole, to be whole. To love this life a thousand times over.

The first time I met my sister-in-law’s mother, my feet were off the ground. I had just entered the family home. I met her eyes, and before I was introduced, she had me locked in an embrace. Leveraged against her ample – ample everything, chest, belly, heart, spirit, laughter — she within seconds was holding me in the air of the kitchen. As my feet dangled, I understood that Monique was blessed with a mother who knew how to lift with love amplified. And she will still. Find a way to carry Monique. In thousands of ways. Maybe this is what I can tell her. Maybe this is the only thing that makes sense, this constant lifting of each other. Love can do that. For the next thousand years.