Can’t stop the tears.

My birthday was yesterday. After coffee in bed from the children, I spent most of my day in a total fog. Unable to determine which way was up.

Mid-afternoon I decided that we needed flowers for our birthday party.  I walked into the flower shop and the first thing I saw was a bucket of irises, one of my mothers favourite, I told the shop lady I wanted them all. Then I walked around the store and bought way more flowers than I had intended to buy.  It wasn’t until I got home that I realized why.

My mother would have bought a ton of flowers for our bbq birthday party. She would have ensured the house was ready and set up and then she’d have brought in beautiful big bouquets of flowers. I missed that, I needed that. My home is now filled with beautiful flowers. But I’m still in a fog.

Sitting alone in the quiet late at night hot tears stream down my face; I can’t stop them they keep coming. It’s a rainfall that won’t stop like the spring rainfall that warms the earth. I miss my mom. I’m angry that she’s not here, and sad that she’s not able to be here for the kids’ party. I had a lovely birthday day, but all I wanted was that birthday card/call/hug from the woman who held me on my birth day.

Grief comes in waves, and the waves come fast and furious at times like at the height of a summer storm. But there are also ebbs when the waves are just a small ripple as the sun sets across the lake. Special occasions, birthdays, and the like make the waves bigger and harder to ignore. So I’m letting them wash over me trying to recognize that this is Grief.

Today we will celebrate the kids (and my) birthdays. We will be surrounded by friends and family who love and care for us. There will be hugs and laughter and smiles, and likely a few tears. But through the rain there will be rainbows of love and happiness, that’s what she would have wanted. We will wade through this current torrent of waves and find the ripples again and have some reprieve from the emotions until the waves build and crash on the shore once more. But today, we celebrate.