I’m celebrating a birthday soon. Sixty-four isn’t really remarkable – nobody trips on it, it’s hardly a bump in the road that we are all traveling. To most, 64 is not a milestone. To me, it’s a mountain.

My mother was sixty four when she died. She left her husband, her kids, and her grandchildren to navigate the future without her. This was not by choice – she had been sick to die for months before the morning of the end. She had suffered. She had wasted away. And through it all she had supported us. We were momentarily relieved when she was finally at rest.

I can remember those days and months of 1989 like they were yesterday. I don’t even need to close my eyes to actually be there. Loosing my mother was a mega event in my life.

I have written essays about my mom over the years – I’ve celebrated her individuality, her eccentricities – she was unconventional, a real one of a kind. I have never written about her loss.

Pain is not something we revisit if we can possibly help it – this leaves it to bubble up on its own. Over years the surprise attack becomes familiar – I’m not sure the pain is dulled so much as seasoned – we recognize it. We cope with it. We get used to it. We carry on.

In as much as I can relive the moment of my mother’s death, I can remember with equal clarity the first day I didn’t break down and cry about it. The tsunami of guilt I felt the night I realized I had spent a day not remembering was overwhelming. Grief was a hole that took me a long time to crawl out of.

But crawl I did – fingernails in the dirt, heart on my sleeve. Happiness started slowly seeping back into my life. My recovery began in earnest about 18 months into the journey. I had an epiphany one morning. I realized I was waiting to feel they way I did before my mother died. I realized that I was never going to be that person again. I had to get on with life as the new person I had become.

As I sit on the cusp of my birthday I am more aware than ever of how young my mother was when she died. Sixty-four is not old by today’s standards. I find myself thinking about my own children and the heartbreak I would feel if I was suddenly faced with the prospect of leaving them. In the midst of her suffering my mother bore this burden too – it must have been awful.

I get a bit maudlin when I think of myself heading into my future without the guiding force of my mother’s example. I will never know how she might have faced her 70s or 80s – I will have to do those decades on my own. The legacy she left for me is now written in stone. In her last lesson she taught me how to face the end. She faced her own mortality with grace, dignity and humor. I pray that I am enough of my mother’s daughter to do the same when my time comes. But I also pray I live until the end like she did – wholeheartedly.

So I will head into my 64th year counting my blessings, cherishing my memories and ready to face what the future holds. I will do so boldly, with humor and faith in the lessons my mother taught me. I can do this…. my foundation is strong.

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