One foot in front of the other…..

Christmas totally kicked my butt and I have had so many thoughts to blog, yet, they drift off when I sit down.

Remember last year, when I got one of these around Christmas, and it cheered me up in January?

I got another one.

because when I see her sitting on the window sill every morning, smiling at me, I can’t help but smile.

Slowly, coming out of the Christmas funk, one step at a time.

Today is a painful day for many of my friends. My heart aches for them, and this time of year my heart aches for me too. Christmas is a tough tough time for me. All these years later.

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” ~Edna St. Vincent Millay

Losing someone you love, is no picnic, ever never at any age.

There are so many times you think to yourself, “I don’t know how I will face tomorrow” – yet, somehow you do. And you face the next day, and the next, until there is a year strung together, and you’re doing it.

You’re surviving.

Then, it can take one thing,

A holiday….

An ornament…..

An anniversary…

A comment from the kids – such a  conversation with my daughter and niece on how different they perceive their lives would have been if my  mom had lived long enough to really impact their lives. And to share with them, in a delicate way, wanting to lift them up , yet not make them want even more than they are missing, how much she loved and cherished them, and would have been their biggest cheerleader.

Or watching my daughter struggle with the tragic loss of a friend…..

Or watching friends wrestle with grief…..

Or a smell, and picture, or comment…..

Seeing a friend experiencing similar events……

That can take you back to that longing and pain so quickly, it hits you like a brick, makes you want to climb back in bed, ignore the world and wait for it to go away.

Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again. ~Rosa Parks

And you start the one step at a time process

all.

over.

again.

But – faith, hope, passion, desire, will to live  and  to love.

DO exist.

And provide that will that we need to put one foot in front of the other, and move forward.
To start stringing those days together again.

The best testament we can give to those we love and have lost, is to live. Out loud. Love. DO something.

Their memories continue within us. We keep them alive, in us. If we give up ~ let bitterness, anger and hate take over ~ their light dims. 

I can’t let that happen.

Besides, my mom would re-visit me ….and smack me silly.

[A] final comfort that is small, but not cold: The heart is the only broken instrument that works. ~T.E. Kalem

If a silly smiling grass head on my window sill helps me , even briefly every morning, to find my light again, then that is what I do!

One foot in front of the other……