Five days after our last post, my mother lost her battle with two cancers.  She lived her last day as if it were like any other.  She made my Dad his favorite bread pudding and meals, watched their favorite TV shows together, chatted over tea or coffee.  My parents spent a leisurely afternoon just being together.  I received a phone call from my Dad just after midnight to come over because my Mom was really sick.  My husband and I were still up and drove a fast fifteen minutes to get to them.  I helped my mother in her final moments and never realized what was happening as it was happening.  Later at the hospital we were told that they had never been able to revive her.  The woman in my life that gave me life had lost hers. 

Now I feel a void. 

I am grateful for family and friends, friends like Cynthia (the other half of TwoLuLa) who listens when I ramble and rant, who holds my hand or hugs me when I feel lost and alone, who brings me back to life when I feel defeated.  A best friend.  I lost my greatest best friend in my mother.  I am more grateful for my other best friends now.  Always I have my sisters and my daughters, but now each of the women in my life mean so much more to me.  I treasure each one of these women because life is so precious and valuable and ends in the blink of an eye when we least expect it.  In the friendship of women I find parts of what I loved about my own mother.  I find some of what I have lost. 

Maybe God makes it that way so that we find what we lost in all of those around us that have always been here - men and women alike - but specifically that mothering sisterly bond grows stronger.  When we lose someone we love, the space left behind in our hearts for the love we received from that one special person, begins to be filled in with the love from others too.  We never fully fill up and forget, but we hurt less.  This is my hope, day by day, one day at a time, that me and my family and friends hurt less from the loss of one great lady.

Peace to you,

Carol