Today she would be 64. It’s been a day like most any day. Full of parenting responsibilities and my typical couple of hours in the car. It has felt entirely normal - except for an inexplicable fatigue. Just barely making it through the day. And then I looked at the calendar…
I’ve been waiting for this day for weeks. Dad’s birthday was 2 weeks ago. Text him, and then the countdown is on. Two weeks. Fourteen days. Life happens. It goes on, because the world doesn’t stop spinning and my heart doesn’t stop beating even though the calendar says it’s a rough day. Its entirely unfair and yet it is what it is.
I’ve learned in almost 9 years, that this is just how it goes. You prepare your mind and your heart for the days that are supposed to be rough. They always are, but never as much as you think. You also know, either by experience or just intuitively (or possibly both) that time heals so many wounds. So today, on her 64th birthday, she’s in heaven and I’m carrying the weight of missing her - almost unexpectedly.
Each day that passes, each birthday that we celebrate without her, is just one day closer to my own entrance into eternity; family reunion at the pearly gates?! It makes it both easier and harder: to know that this life is fleeting, both because I’ve taken a science class or two, but because I’ve watched close loved ones leave this earth. I held my mom’s hand in March of 2015 and told her it was ok to go home. I sat and watched as we waited for her last breath. Each one a bit of a surprise, as they grew further apart and shallower with each passing moment. I thought that day was going to be the hardest day of my life. It was, until 2 years later in February I had to do the same thing with my son. This broken world can be so cruel sometimes.
So even though today has been pretty normal as far as life goes, today (and every day for that matter) is anything but normal. Its a reminder of what is lost - to me, to my siblings, to my dad, to my kids, to my siblings’ kids… Audrey was doing an examination of a poem earlier this week and she was trying to explain what it meant to her. The poem was about a mountain sitting high above the plains - and as she talked about what this poem stirred in her, she said it meant hope. Because memories are created (in this case at a special place like this mountain) and even when the rocks crumble, you hold on to the legacy and you never forget. And then she said, “Like my Grammy. I never knew her, but I know her”
I wish on so many levels that she had been able to meet my mama. Vicki Vincent loved big and hard. She would have been the most amazing grandma and would have cherished that role for however long she was blessed to own it. She never met Audrey… but Audrey is so much like her, its as if God left a small piece of Vicki for this generation to know and love.
Happy Birthday, Mama. I hope that you’re rejoicing with a chorus of angels and I hope that your hands are still high in the air as you sing every note off key. Boy, do I miss you.