Happy Mother's Day?

(Note: I'm trying to write as a form of healing, but I'm emotionally unbalanced right now, so I apologize for this piece but I needed to say something. To share something.)

Happy Mother's Day?

Today is the first Sunday of the month of May.

Traditionally, this day is celebrated as Mother's Day. In my life, I have been blessed to still have my mother on this earth. I still have both my grandmothers too. 

But this year, this year is different because a week and a half ago, Kathleen Burkhalter Bell left for her eternal and heavenly home and no one was ready to bid her farewell.

Kathleen wasn't my mother, but she was like a second mother to me. She cared about me, encouraged me, asked about my life, my friends, everything. I have been crying over her absence for days. Feeling rage about the supposed unfairness of it all since the day it happened. And bluntly, it sucks that Mother's Day has to be celebrated when all over the world there are people who don't have mothers. It's just, frankly, bullshit (sorry about my language Mama Bell, but I hope you understand).

I know that's the anger talking.

I don't have a sad story to tell about how my own mother was neglectful or any stories to tell about how Kathleen stepped into my life to be the mother I never had, because she didn't. My own mother, Karen Racine, is an amazing, hardworking, incredible person. She birthed and raised 8 children. She attends as many of our performances and concerts and important events as she physically can. She cares and she loves and she does her best every single day.

I love my mother, very very much.

But strangely, no amount of love for her takes away the ache that I feel over this loss of Kathleen, Mama Bell, my "second mom". 

Grieving sucks. It's twisted and terrible and messy. It's turned all the ordinarily confusing thoughts in my head into desperate unaddressable tornados of emotional tempests unwilling to calm down unless something changes.

But nothing changes. Time passes. Simultaneously slow and quick, it pulls us away from the significance of a particular and haunting day without granting the closure of distance. Yet, we are told in times of trial that time "heals everything". I hold onto this belief because I have to, not just for myself, but for others. For my best friend. For her family. For everyone who has lost someone. But the "time heals everything" mantra seems like such a lie at the present moment because it's not okay. It is 100%, undoubtedly, unmistakably, not. okay.

But that's good enough. Somehow, not being okay has to be good enough right now. We just have to keep remembering the things that are worth clinging to. Keep remembering that Kathleen was a woman full of life and try to emulate that. We have to keep holding on to the fact that Mother's Day is about celebrating the people who care and cared for us, related directly by blood or not, whether they have left us for their next journey or not.

Mother's Day is tough this year. 

I'm sure that for Kathleen Bell's children, Mother's Day will be tough every year for a long time to come. (Every day will be a tough day for a while to come.)

I'm thinking of them all the time, but today especially. I'm praying for them, everyday, especially today.

And today, I'm spending time with my own mom when I can, because life is too precious and too short to neglect those I love.

Thank you for yet another life lesson, Mama Bell.

I hope it's okay that I too, keep on missing you for a while.

...Happy Mother's Day.