Life Without Mother

Dear Mom,

I have nothing profound to share this evening, except the excitement I experienced in finding an old composition class binder of yours. It had many notes and small writing assignments. Of course, I’m sure when you were writing those little paragraphs and poems, you never thought twice the treasure they would one day be. Yet, here we are in this moment, over seven years from your passing, and I’m still finding little pieces of your existence so wonderfully intertwined with mine.

I find that my writing style — though most definitely my own in its occasional dry wit and intentional dramatics — mimics yours. You also had a flair for the dramatics, although your prose presented that flair in fanciful phrasing with the sincerest integrity of truth. Your heart, your mind, your soul poured out in every little piece you wrote. Now, your stories and the reflections of your perceptions saved in those brief, prompted responses did not always carry a strong emotion of passion as my wording above may imply. No, sometimes it was simply a prompt to describe “desert” with three separate examples and two of the three were Biblical examples (with the other being a fairy tale). Little tidbits of your life as a wife and mother conveyed through brainstormed pages and essays.

Mom, how I wish we could talk about writing! I remember you tried to do more writing when we started school. But, you were always so busy with us, with our church family, with our neighbors. You were busy with people. It’s how I’ve been lately. And to an extent, I plan to continue a focus on people. However, fear has kept me from many things. A blanket fear of the future. A doubt that I truly have a future here, now, in this present age. (I am secure in that Blessed Future I have in Christ!) By God’s grace, as I’ve been unpacking these many tangible memories, He’s helping me unpack many memories I’d forgotten, and re-awakening dreams He’d given long ago that I’ve dismissed as unimportant or impossible.

The thing is, Mom, I’m going for it. Writing. Editing. Travel. Possibly school again (though that may be on hold for a bit longer). Life. I’m setting goals. Trying to envision a future for myself different from the one I desperately clung to the past ten years, especially after you died.

Finding your writing both caused and soothed the ache of my heart. Caused as your presence remains close with that shadow-stroke of the pen — in every line through each letter “s” — and yet achingly absent to ask more of your thoughts and stories. Then, my heart quieted in the inspiration of the simple Truth that spilled even into what many would call “silly”, unimportant exercises from some class almost twenty years prior. You made clear your heart’s greatest loves in the most mundane. Jesus, your husband, your children, and so much more. And I pray my own writing conveys as much.

Your daughter,
Hannah