Forgive me if.....

Forgive me if I’m not myself over the next few days. This is probably my hardest week of the year, because so many things hit at once.

Today is March 4, 2019.... 3 years since the last time I saw my mom alive. Correction: since I saw her existing. She was on so much pain medication that she was out for all but about 10 minutes of the time I spent with her. I sang to her that day, and the songs “Given to Fly” and “I Am Mine” and “Scar on the Sky” still hold a very sweet place in my heart. They always will.

Tomorrow marks three years since that phone call .... 6:04 am. She’d passed at 5:55. I knew what it was when they wouldn’t speak to me but wanted to speak to Daddy. The resignation of “what time?” and knowing for sure. Dealing with things I never imagined — waiting on the mortuary, figuring out clothes to cremate her in (like it mattered but it was for us to see the body one last time.

The next day (March 6) will be both joyful and weirdly somber — Ash Wednesday and Daddy’s 75th birthday! I’m also getting together with some friends, one whom I haven’t seen in 5 years! I’m looking forward to that and will celebrate with Daddy over the weekend.

March 7 is back to somber — my maternal grandmother passed that day in 1982. There are moments it still stings as much as it did back then. She was the one person in this world who showed me completely unconditional love as a child. I miss that as an adult. We need more Grannies in the world who are here to do nothing but give unconditional love.

March 10 is another hard day, especially this year. My friend Tee from high school would have turned 50. It is still unreal to believe she’s been gone for 13 years now. It sucks that she hasn’t been in the world.....

March 12 will suck even worse. That would have been Richard’s 44th birthday. I am still not over the fact that my brother is perpetually 42 for the rest of my life. That I’ll never get to wish him a happy birthday ever. That I’m an only-again. Is there a support group for oldest-only-agains? There has to be somewhere.....

March 19 is a weird day too. It was my grandfather’s birthday but also the day his sister passed. My great-aunt Mary was like another grandparent to me. Weird to realize that she’s been absent from my life for all these years and yet I still remember how much she impacted my life.

And as always, there’s the 18th and 22nd..... days I never forget.

Maybe someday March won’t be weird......