Whuff....

Well that was harder than I expected it to be. Which is so weird, because logically looking at it I should have expected it to be hard. But I didn't even think about it, I just dove in. And then had to stop and take a few breaths...

I ordered flowers today for Brent's mother for Mother's Day. Just Brent's. For the first time it was just Brent's.

Looking at the flowers and choosing which arrangement to send I saw the one I sent Mom last year and how when I talked to her I wasn't sure if she liked them or not. In the past few years she had become more and more distant. Fewer and fewer phone calls. Less chatty when you did happen to reach her. I talked about that in some of the other grief chronicles. Part of it, I think, was that she just couldn't hear as well and part of it was she was just not following the present day conversations as quickly. But it added up to not really knowing if she liked things you sent her.

Brent's mother has always been a little harder for me to read. And I think part of that is because she doesn't really know how to read me either. For instance a few years ago I sent her a collection of succulents for Mother's Day. I thought the pots they came in were really cool looking and they would be easy to take care of in New Mexico. They wouldn't die like cut flowers do. I really liked them. When she got them she asked Brent, "Did you send these to me because I'm prickly?" Well no...but now that you mention it...

But my mother used to be easier for me. Flowers, chocolate (before chemo she LOVED chocolate, after chemo she lost her taste for it), brightly colored clothes or jewelry. But as she aged the reactions were more likely to be "oh, yeah, we got that." So then I start to second guess myself. Is she just being more honest now that she's older and she's never liked anything I've ever sent? Does she just roll her eyes when gifts from me come and say, "Well you know your sister." to my siblings?

And then once she died...

Well everything became a second guessing game. As you all know.

But for some reason I didn't even think about how hard this was going to be. Until I was doing it. And there was the arrangement from last year. And then ones I have gotten her in the past. And there was no balancing out of cost this year, If we spend this much on your mother we need to spend that much on mine...Like they would have ever compared notes...

A dear friend of mine lost her father this week. He had been sick for awhile and she posted last Friday that he had stopped eating and they were just making him comfortable now. She said it was such a weird feeling to be waiting for him to pass, hoping it went quickly while at the same time not ready to let go. Yes, I am familiar with that feeling.

I'm not sure why I didn't think it would be hard to not buy my mother a Mother's Day gift.

The last step was the one where you pick who you are going to send the flowers to. And my mother's name was the top of the list.

I'm not sure why I didn't realize how hard that was going to be...