Life Without Mother

Dear Mom,

There is an extent to which this letter writing almost seems to be fake. Am I really writing to you, or simply the idea of you? Is there a point at which your presence here on earth becomes less real as you are in the Place far more Real than anything we could imagine? Perhaps I am simply too far in the abstract this late at night (though it really isn’t as late as you’ve known me to stay up reading my latest novel).

My point is, well, what is my point? Is there a point to these letters? Have they really done anything for me? Because here I am, often feeling just as lost and drowning in grief as I did the month after you went Home. Not all of the time. Maybe it’s exacerbated by the anxiety of all of the recent changes and transitions of adulthood. Maybe it’s worse because you were always there and then suddenly you weren’t. (As opposed to if I had gone to college and already begun the process of living independent from you and Dad and then you were simply no longer at the other end of phone calls.)

I actually didn’t intend on writing you a letter tonight. I was intending to work on my novel that I’ve been writing lately. (It’s about a girl who lost her mom suddenly. Go figure.) But, I’m having a bit of writer’s block. I’m stuck in the rut of details again. Droning on about the characters’ everyday life but not crafting anything worth reading. Do you remember how I used to bring you all of those stories I wrote? Those chapters of (as of yet) unfinished novels and those poems that were a twelve-year-old’s attempts at sophisticated expression of emotion of which she had no true knowledge. I remember countless mornings when you’d be ushering me out the door to school and I’m handing you a stack of paper-clipped pages asking you to read them. I don’t remember if you did. I know you did some of them. But, I also know that was the time when you were struggling. I don’t remember sitting and talking about them like we did the novels I was reading. But then, I could talk for hours to a brick wall about the books I read.

I do remember that you always encouraged my reading. You and Dad. Always buying books for me. Sometimes when we just went to Walmart and I happened to see one I had been wanting to read. (Like that time you bought me Divergent and Insurgent in spite of my having a concussion with the instruction to not read for those two weeks. You said you’d get them if I promised not to read them at least that first week. I’m sorry I broke that promise. But you knew. You always did.) And every birthday and Christmas and celebration in between, I could count on books being a part of my gifts. Like that one Christmas when I received twenty-two books and a laptop and headset with which to write my own novels.

Mom, I miss you. To this day, it seems like just yesterday I was walking through the front door of our house in Frisco and you would pop out from the kitchen, behind the stairwell and ask about my day. I miss our daily hugs. We were so intentional about that. You always made time for it, too. Mom, those hugs meant so much. I don’t know that I ever told you. But they did. There were so many days when I was struggling and I didn’t know how to talk about it or if I even wanted to admit what I was struggling with and I needed to know that I was seen. And those hugs did that. “Ma, I need a hug.” All I had to say. Sometimes it was a quick hug. Sometimes you would stand there with me and lean against the kitchen counter, just giving me a moment. And by high school, I was your height, so I fit there with my head against your shoulder and yours on mine. And my arms fit around you. I remember when I was younger and getting to be a big kid meant being able to wrap my little arms around you like you could for me. I think I reached that point in the fifth or sixth grade.

Anyway, it’s about two months until the five year anniversary of you going Home. I don’t want to be sad. You are far more alive than I am. I just feel like such a child. Like a child trying to play adult. Which I’m sure many young people feel when they take their first steps into greater independence from their parents.

I’m a bit jealous. You’re already There. Seeing the Victory. Seeing Completion and Wholeness right there in front of you. This life, however long — whether for five years or fifty more years — is only a blink compared to eternity. I can make it a blink. That’s all. Then Jesus forever. His glory as the light that illuminates all shadows. No more tears or sorrows or separation or brokenness. Only everlasting joy.

I don’t want to say goodnight. Could keep writing all night because I have so much to say. But I need to sleep. We are going out into our community here in the South Bronx to meet people where they are with the wonderful news of Jesus. Praying for boldness here. I freak out about the prospect of not knowing how to start conversations with strangers. But He goes before and behind and with me. He will never leave or forsake. His name will be proclaimed forever — just as you are doing now.

I miss you and love you.

Your daughter,
Hannah