I love being a mom. And so you'd think that it would follow that Mother's Day would be one of my favorite holidays. I mean, what could be better than a day to celebrate the magic of life and the unique love of a mother? How much more "Goddess" can you get... right?

But 7 years ago on Mother's Day morning I got a phone call that changed who I was forever. When the phone rang, waking me up from fitful dreams, I already knew.
 
The voice on the line was soft and comforting, but the news, however, was not. It was one of the nurses from Hospice calling to let me know that my dad has passed away in the wee hours of the morning.

My range of emotions were like a pendulum, swinging from sadness for myself and my sister and joy that our dad's struggle was finally over. It would be years before that pendulum found its balance again.

But the hardest part of that morning was knowing that I had to call my little sister and greet her with the same news I'd just come to know. No breakfast in bed from her sweet little girls, no day at the beach picking up sea shells, no Mother's Day brunch at her favorite restaurant. Just the harsh reality of life and death and grief. And as hard as it was for me, I knew it would be worse for her. 

I met my sister at Hospice that day and we cried together. We refused to let anyone even say the words "Mother's Day" for years because it would send us into a spiral of grief and tears we still couldn't get a grip on. In fact, I don't even think we called our own mother (who'd divorced our dad more than 10 years earlier) on Mother's Day for many years after that (sorry mom).

Seven years later though, I'm finally starting to enjoy Mother's Day again. I'm sitting here in bed this morning without the heavy heart I had back then. My son just brought me a cup of coffee and I can smell bacon wafting up from the kitchen.

My dad is certainly on my mind today, and I miss him like crazy, but in some ways that makes me want to celebrate even more, to honor the parts of him that are still alive in me. Yeah, today's gonna be a good day. It's Mother's Day afterall.
 


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