Cora

I Googled you tonight mom.  After going through 16 pages, I stopped.  I couldn't find anything that didn't associate you with tomorrow.  Not one page.  There are multiple tributes to you, multiple websites to leave your condolences, beautiful tributes to your loving soul.  But they all have to do with they way you died.  Flight rosters, alphabetical lists, detailed accounts of how we found out, the names of the "loved ones" left behind.  But nothing about you.  Just you.  I was the one who gave your eulogy at your memorial service a mere 4 days after your death.  I have no idea what I said.  I'm not even sure how I managed to stand up there.  I was certain that somehow your invisible arms were holding me up and giving me the strength to speak.  You knew better not to hug me.  Though strangely, that is the last thing you did to me.  Aha moment here; why I don't like to be hugged.  At 30, I was not prepared to discuss you in the past tense.  At 37 I still am not.  It has been seven years since I last saw, spoke and hugged you.  Some days it seems like forever and at times, like yesterday.  The little toddler you loved with all of your heart and had you wrapped around his finger?  He's now a strapping boy of almost 10 who shops at Abercrombie, listens to Linkin Park and is an inch shy of towering over me.  The cherub faced baby girl with the luscious folds in her infant thighs?  A Hannah Montana loving pint sized style icon with a huge heart.  And me? Did you hear my pleads this year, "Mom, if you can hear me, please give me a sign."  Cujo and I always joke how we'll call your name into the darkness hoping for some sign or something freaky will happen and it's really you trying to send a message.  I really, really needed you this year.  So did Cujo.  We'd always wonder how you would have dealt with us.  I always came up with the same answer; you would support us in what made us happy.  You would allow us to fall on our face knowing that the fall was necessary for the next step.

I need to thank you.  I was never a giver.  Yet it was the quality I admired most about you.  Mom, I am like the best giver there is.  I love it.  I love how it makes my victims feel and me.  I totally get why you did it.  You had the most beautiful friendships.  Mom, I have the best friends.  I really wish you could have met Fruity.  She wears her heart on the outside just like you did.  Like I thought I never could.  It scares the living crap out of me but the heart is coming out and I feel like I can see the world in colors that never existed.  I smile so much now.  A real smile.  I couldn't for months after you died.  But motherhood is what defined you.  I've got to be honest, I kind of cut myself off from my two for awhile but you know that and you also knew why.  I didn't want them to feel as horrible as I did after you died so thought that if I disconnected myself from them that they wouldn't miss me as much when I died.  I know, brilliant.  They miss you so much.  It breaks my heart.  I have always said, how are they ever going to know what it was like to be loved by you?  I finally got the answer.  Me.  

I am so overwhelmed right now.  The tears are flowing, the nose running and that ache in my chest is back.  Yet I am also surrounded by love.  A bunch of kids from my class last year brought me a cake this morning because "You are you Ms. H-B."  They know what tomorrow is.  It totally made me melt.  I've gotten e-cards, emails, cards.  Fruity and some other friends also got me a gift.  Have to admit, I'm slightly scared after the last package Fruity sent me but I'm sure I'll love it.  Okay, starting to smile now.  You know that one of our favorite movies is Steel Magnolias.  Our favorite line, "Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion."  That is my life now Mom.  I'm listening to Aimee Mann right now because tomorrow night FP and I are going to see her.  We're going to order a drink and toast you my beautiful friend.  We are going to toast your unconditional love and your strength.  I am still in awe how at the age of 22 when you found yourself unmarried and pregnant how you ignored those around you who wanted you to give me up for adoption.  Some of my earliest memories is of you making me wear a dress.  With my two long braids.  Just like you in the picture above.  Maybe this is why I like short hair and up until this summer, hated dresses.  I am letting the hair grow out.  Just a little.  I remember your army green Firebird with your red 8 track Santana in  it.  I totally got my musical obsession from you.  And your style.  But the best part of you that I got; your heart.

So look for me tomorrow in my killer oh so Jackie O dress and shades reading names off the State House steps with Governor Patrick.  It is so important to your grandchildren that we honor you.  You are a hero.  But not for being on that highjacked plane.  For having me.  For raising me.  And Cujo.  And the we think he might be a Republican brother (Cujo and I don't know what to do about that one.)  For standing by your faith.  For always showing up.

Always.