the hurt puppy returns

I'm needlepointing Mom's last piece she gave me of hers, and I'm dreading that last stitch - there won't be any more of that connection with her. I look at my right thumbnail - there is still a dob of nail polish left from the manicure I got the morning she died. I don't want to lose that, either. I've missed a phone call, so I retrieve my messages.

"Hi honey, it's me, Mom - it's 3 o'clock, and I just called to see how you were doing. Just know that I love you love you and we'll talk later. Bye bye." An old message, sent the week before she went into the hospital for the last time.

Don't EVER hit 4 - it repeats the message. Again and again. Three times. I can't see from my crying. A little squeak escapes from my mouth, and I remember Bill thinking my cries were from a hurt puppy. I smile a little, but I really thought this was getting better. I hadn't cried like this in a while. God, I miss her - will that EVER go away? That longing, that hurt? I can't understand all of this. I sense that it will float back and forth.

My client yesterday looked at me carefully and said, "There's something different about you." I didn't say anything. "How's your mother?" she asked. "She died," I said. "That's it," she replied. "You're softer, gentler, deeper, changed."

I think everything changes us, don't you? Whether it's a "good" relationship or a "bad" one. Everything that we connect with, for however short or long, changes us, like different paints introduced onto the canvas. Even if it's just a dab of green, right there, under her leg - that's what I saw that made me buy the huge Earl Linderman painting, "The Kiss." Just that little dab of green - it moved me.

But Mom isn't just a dab of green - she's the whole blue backdrop of my sky, the canvas on which everything else is painted, she's the water in the river, and everything flows IN her, she's the wind that carries everything across the sky. She's my heartbeat that keeps the rest of my body alive. She's that constant, alive or dead. I know that. I think that's why the puppy still hurts.