Every Month is a Little Different....

It's been 7 months.

I keep telling myself that it will be easier over time. I keep thinking about how people are convinced that time heals wounds, that it'll get easier after this, that I just need to keep looking ahead, remembering how she might want me to live.

Sometimes, it feels stupid.

Sometimes, it feels like a waste... not that I know what it is that I'm wasting.

We're entering into the Winter Holiday season. Thanksgiving and Christmas always felt synonymous with Kathleen. She always talked about how much she looked forward to creating good memories of these holidays with her husband, her children. She might have loved Halloween for it's ghost stories and the crispness of fall, the colors and the excitement, but in my mind, Thanksgiving and Christmas were her holidays.

I've cried a lot already this past week. Maybe that's why, despite that quiet “it's been 7 months” tag floating unseen by the un-involved, next to the date, (I wonder when it will be that I am able to stop counting the time in months) I don't feel like crying.

I just feel tired.

I've cried a lot already.

I was fine, thinking about Thanksgiving, thinking about all the things I'm grateful for as I cooked yet another dessert in my kitchen on Wednesday night. But it was the thoughts of gratitude that made me sad. Kathleen always leaned on gratitude. It's what she emphasized and promoted every day. So she became synonymous with Thanksgiving in my mind and I broke down in tears while I baked.

I cried again just hugging my mom in her kitchen.

I'm so grateful for my mom. For my family.

And I just kept on crying on and off all night Wednesday and all day Thursday.

And yet, despite all the tears, I am still grateful.

I am grateful to have known her these last few years.

I'm grateful to be close with her family.

I'm so grateful to have learned from her.

I seek to find gratitude in the little things when times are tough and dark because that's how she wanted everyone to live. That's how she believed we could find and reach our best moments.

I'm so grateful, Mama Bell.

That doesn't mean I'm not also so very sad.

You and everyone who loves you are in my thoughts, my prayers, and my well wishes as we move past Thanksgiving and into the Christmas season.

But I'll still miss you.

With love and gratitude,

~Rose