It’s been three years since my mom died. It feels like so much longer, and I don’t know if that’s just how grief works or if throwing in a global pandemic has anything to do with it, too.
Like the image (from this account) says, I don’t want to celebrate a day that brought so much pain, but I can’t ignore it, either. I’m still figuring out how to mark it–the first year I got a tattoo, the second year I got bangs. But this year I’m just going to get through it.
I don’t have much to say this year, except that it doesn’t get easier but it does…change, I guess. I think of her just as much but there’s (usually) less of a stab of remembering. It’s easier to talk about her. And when I find myself saying something she would have said, I don’t worry that I’m turning into my mother–I feel proud, instead, that some part of her is in me and shining through.