Not a new year, no, but another anniversary.  Three years ago, in the coming small hours of the morning, my Mother died.  I just read my blog from last year, dated a year ago tomorrow, talking about my feelings and actions around this day. 

I am not as emotional this year.  I had a mini-meltdown after a glass of wine on Tuesday, which made me want to drive my truck into the frozen lake that night on the way home from work.  I had a little teariness just now when talking to Mr. GF, who called just as I was reading last year’s post. 

I recall going to a grief seminar put on by Hospice about a year after my dad died.  As I was sitting there, among a roomful of people, listening, I had the most intense urge just to put my head down on the table and go to sleep.  It was remarkable.  I realized then that that feeling, that intense exhaustion, is one way that your core expresses grief.  It doesn’t know what else to do with such a powerful, painful feeling.

That incredible tiredness is what I am feeling today, have been feeling since I got home from dropping Kelsea off at school.  Now, I watch the clock, count ahead two hours for North Carolina time, and remember what I was doing three years ago at this hour.  She was very close to fading for the last time.  I had asked the Hospice chaplin to speak with her, to help her resolve something that was keeping her from letting go, and I think just around now, they were talking.  I was never privy to that conversation, but whatever Jodi said worked.

I could so have used my Mother’s support this past year.  It has been a year of loss, sorrow, confusion, self-doubt, with some moments of bliss and hope.  She would have been there for me every step of the way and talked me through some of my own muddlements.  I know people say “Oh, she’s still with you. She’s always with you.”  It’s true, she is, in a way, but she has moved on, as she was so excited about doing, and she knows I need to stand on my own without her.  So I can feel her watching, but not helping.  She trusts me to rely on my own strength, as she always did.  That strength was one of her finest legacies.  She had it.  She taught me to have it.

But tonight, I am as tired as she was this night three years ago.