Three Things

Three things:

1. I am part of a craft club. I spend the evening with friends at one of their homes and we spent our Saturday night making bean frames. We had five varieties of beans and glued them on a few frames and then discussed our next craft.

Saturday nights about six years ago used to be spent either drinking, wanting to drink, or recovering from drinking on Friday night. There was some expectation of shenanigans. Now shenanigans make me feel the shame and pain, and I'm more preoccupied with making my new apartment-to-be look pretty. I believe this is called nesting.

2. The Dude came home yesterday and told me he went to a yard sale (Didn't I tell you?) and that he brought home a vintage KFC Colonel collectible piggy bank for $5. He preempted my protests by saying there was nothing I could say or do to make him throw it away. He has spent this morning on Kovels.com looking up old crap he's found on the side of the road and which I have made him sell or throw away. So far the biggest complaint is the chair. For an investment of $200 for materials, he could have repaired the chair 10 years down the road and it would be worth $400. For the record, the website said the Colonel is worth $18 American.

3. Today is an anniversary. I wanted to save it for last because it's the most important. 10 years ago my mom died. My younger brother and I were teenagers. I remember feeling lost, incapable of getting out of bed some mornings and thinking about the future was too hard. And now the future that I couldn't bear thinking about is here. I'm living it.

And I've learned something about grief, the real kind of grief that changes you. When you lose one of the few people in your life who truly and utterly matter to you, you never really get over it. You learn to adapt, to cope and to find joy in other areas of life. But you never feel less sorrow over your loss. You just know how to deal with it and keep moving forward.

I've been trying these past 10 years to become the sort of woman my mom would want to know. I will never get the chance to become her friend in my adult years now, but I can at least try to be someone she'd like. It's made me think a lot about my moral compass. Some people look to religion or the law or their parents. I'm using her memory.

I also know that at the 20-year mark, and the 30-year mark, I'll still miss her as much as I do now. And while it hurts, it's a comfort. Love is sometimes measured by how much pain you feel in its absence.