Today is the sixth anniversary of my mother’s death. I know many people who, even decades later, tell me they think of their deceased mother every day. I confess that I can’t make that claim. While I spoke to my mother nearly every day of my life, this became increasingly difficult in the last months of her life as her heart failure robbed her brain of oxygen. After her death, I had many months of flashbacks to those last difficult years, while also dealing with my father’s grief. He used to talk to and about my mother often, but, over time, his own heart failure erased the memory of her death. Toward the end, he would ask when she was coming to visit him in the skilled nursing unit and all I could say is that he would see her soon.
The photo above is of the memorials we placed at the memorial park where their cremains are inurned. I wrote this post explaining their significance when we placed them in 2022.
On Mother’s Day, I went to visit their resting place and was shocked to find that our memorials had been removed. I contacted the office, hoping that they had been placed in storage but they were just gone.
Alone in the room near my parents’ grave, I cried and told them I was sorry that these special memorials had been lost.
I think that is the only time that I have spoken aloud to my parents there.
My family has been supportive of me as I’ve dealt with the loss of these special and meaningful memorials to my parents. I’ve decided to print a photo of them and put it in a plastic frame to place on the table near their grave. That way, if it disappears, I would be able to replace it easily.
In the post linked above, I wrote about feeling more at peace when we placed the memorial. I think I had come to a place in living with loss where I could set aside the trauma of my parents’ final years and deaths and have better memories surface. I’m not sure if that is the point where I stopped thinking about my parents every day or not.
What I do know every day is that my parents gifted me not only with life but also with the foundation of who I am.
Their legacy is always with me, whether or not I bring it to consciousness.
