Letter to My Mother, #2

Dearest Mom,

The Prophet was right when he said, "love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation." You've been stepping farther and farther away from the shore, so I've been placing tiny pieces of my heart in little glass bottles and setting them out to sea. I've plumbed the depths of my love for you and I am amazed to find it has no end. No beginning, no end, only an endless ocean that has no boundaries or limits.

I wrote to Dad the other day about approaching milestones in my life and he said he was sad you weren't here to enjoy them with us. Here is what I wrote to him in response:

"I know, Dad. I am sad, too. I am sad I don't get to share our happy news with her. I am sad I don't get to call her up and ask for her sage wisdom when life is scary or confusing. This is grief - being in the sadness, feeling all parts of it, letting it wash over you. I think grief is like any emotional hurt, in that it comes in waves. There is an ebb and a tide, but I don't know if it ever goes away. But there's something beautiful about the pain of grief that isn't always true about other emotional wounds. It hurts so much because we love so deeply and because the love we received was so great. It's no real consolation, it's never the same, we'll never be the same, but I know that her love made us all better people. And I know no one can take that away from me, so in that regard, I'm happy I'll always get to keep little pieces of her, even though she'll be taking pieces of me with her."

I don't know why so much of my love for and grief about losing you has to do with the ocean, but it clearly does. I have a goal to use my sadness of losing you to create an allegory of sorts, though the project has yet to take shape. If nothing else, I think I found my setting. I just hope the muse shows up and helps me write a good story. Here's hoping I inherited your way with words. 

I was reminded of the poem you wrote about me when I was just a little girl (Sarah, my sweet/my sparkling sprite/you wiggle, you giggle/You fill me with delight) and I could not get those words, almost lyrics, out of my mind. I hope to touch others the way you did, Mom. 

I love you and miss you forever,

Sarah

Strong tobacco

Hey kittens,

I've been away for a while because of vacay and so many other things that I cannot get into at the moment.
I just had to share something, if for no other reason, to release it from my mind. Some of my closest friends eva came to visit a few weeks ago and, seeing as I've been feeling particularly uncomfortable in my skin, I tried to avoid the camera as much as possible. I did make it into a few shots and seeing them, taken from all different angles and degrees of candidness, was, as the Germans say, strong tobacco. In other words, seeing those pictures of myself was such a shock, that it's taken the wind out of me. I am almost speechless at my girth. It is no wonder I am not smiling in hardly any of the pictures I didn't know were being taken of me. I've reached a clear high and low, which is never fun, but I have choices.
I can shame myself, bury my head in the sand and continue killing myself slowly. Or I can decide to love and care for myself a little bit more every day. For reasons I cannot explain, the stakes have gone way, way up in my life, so option two is the only way to go, if I ever hope to be happy.

Strong tobacco is strong.