2013

Tomorrow is your birthday. Your friends are meeting at your grave and later for lunch by the lake. They invited me to come with. I wish you'd be 68 tomorrow.

We spent the past week skiing, all three of us with our families. You would have been proud of us, we didn't fight, hardly, anyway. We were kind of tidy. Tom and I were skiing all by ourselves for the first time in two years because Tonie loves being with her two Uncles and her two tiny cousins.

We are back home since Friday. I am not well. The crushing pain is now a sinking pain. It drags me down numbingly. I am terribly tired, I have difficulties falling asleep. I watch one episode of friends after the other at night. What a relieve that there are 10 Seasons. Once I'm done I'll start with Sex and the City. I am sick of packing bracelets and the orders keep coming. 

I dreamed of you for the first time since you died. Twice. You were with me.

I miss you. More and more every day. It does not become better, right now it feels like it's getting worse. I love you. You were so difficult and so special and I loved you. Please come back. 

Tomorrow I'll try again. To look for the happy stuff.

2012

Years ago – I was about 8 – we spent a couple of days in Lisbon before vacationing by the sea. A gypsy woman somewhere in the streets close by a farmers market wanted to read your palm and tell your future. I was mesmerized, I so wanted to know my future, even if it was a dramatic one. The memory is all tangled with one of the "Sissi" movies. You denied me my wish and explained how important it is not to know what lies ahead of us. I didn't understand. It was so much more exciting to know!

Imagine we had known in 2011 hat this year would be your last. The year you'd die. What if I had known since I was a kid that I would loose you before my 40th birthday. What would I have done differently? Everything! Nothing?

For New Years last year Tom and I had decided to live an utterly uneventful year. Since we met in 2009 so much had happened. We moved in together, we took our first trips together. We lost a baby together. We got engaged and married. We moved and we welcomed Tonie. So much had happened, we decided to simply enjoy and relax and concentrate on the present. Claim of certainty. You get in in almost every movie. It is one of my favorites.

I will never wish for anything on New Years ever, ever again in my life. Never. Ever. I love you and I miss you, please come back.

PS All these thoughts running thorugh my head while on the slopes by myself today. Reason enough to suffer in style once again: I bought a peplum Proenza Schouler jacket in lapis blue, black and bordeaux (outlet: half prize, it's no fun any other way). You would love it!

Distance

My dearest Mom, we survived Christmas, it wasn't as bad as expected. Will tell you later on. By now I understand it's usually the before and after that's tough not the event itself (burial, memorial, Christmas, death). We finally managed to start our winter vacation today. Everything I want to do takes so much longer at the moment.

Just watched "The Lake House". First time I watched the movie I downloaded the soundtrack. It was so quiet and moving, touching something, peaceful still longing, I cannot describe. A kitschy story. But still. I really remember it.

Anyway. I miss you, I love you and it makes me very sad that today and for the past days, I am sometimes thinking of you without the dreadful jolts of pain. This is new. It's a relieve and at the same time I hate it. It means you've stepped into something past. Soon it will be 2013 and it will be a year in which you are not alive. A Million kisses.

Christmas

Without you. First Christmas without you ever in my life.

I was at your grave today. I never thought about how many people go to the graveyard on Christmas, very many, really. It is warm, much too warm for December, a bee was flying around the flowers on your grave. People are weeding and they bring little Christmas trees. Usually it is very quiet. Today the parking lot was crowded, coming and going. Your friend Jay has been here before me. She lighted a little candle. I can't believe you're not with us anymore. I can't believe it. Can NOT believe that you won't appear tonight. Wouldn't Christmas be reason enough for you to come back? All of us being here? I wish you were here.

Our Christmas tree is the same as last year. Lots of orderly colors, this year I also sorted the sizes. Small to small, big to big, pink to pink and fuchsia to fuchsia. I like it. It looks very summery on the pictures. The sun is glinting into the living room.  Last year: the first Christmas at Tom's and my place and the first time you were a guest on Christmas since forever.

The tree at your house is a mix also. As it will be the last time for a tree in your house as it used to be, I decided to give all your Christmas decorations a chance. One area is for pink and bubbly ornaments, one is for clean, classic silver things, one is red, one part of the tree is full of ice cones and cats and tulips in any color. And at one point I just stopped, not caring for the perfect tree as you wouldn't walk around it to point out "wholes". So I will be the only one to see the imperfections anyway.

I miss u terribly. If you won't be here tonight, it must be true. You are dead.

"Time is a rubberband"

I wish you were here. I wonder where you are. Thinking about time. The time we had. What time felt for you when you knew you would die. Now there is no time for you. Waiting for the urn to crash or whatever an urn does to disintegrate.

I was about eleven when I played around with a selfmade towel doll. Awa, about maybe... 63 at that time – younger than you – watched me and explained how the experience of time changes while growing older. And I used to feel time speeding up, days disappearing and weeks rushing by. But since my pregnancy time became slohoowwwwww. Waiting for Tonie, 3 wks, 4 wks, 12 wks, 20 wks, waiting for her to grow, to be born, we moved... waiiiiitin for her arrival for hours on end, our first exciting months. Your diagnose and waiting for your death and waiting to learn how to live without you. My time feels like eternity. Probably a good thing.

All I wish for Christmas is you. I miss u. Come back. This is no fun.

PS the quote is from "Girls". I gorged through the first season last weekend. I hated the first and the second episode while knowing I was hooked. You will be shocked and you will wonder whether live's like that for twenty something. Gawd, they are awkward. I remember.

RIP

My dearest, sweetest Mommanimal,

today you found your final resting place. The day after you died we went looking for a family grave. And the three of us all liked a small space beneath a birch tree surrounded by hedges. This is where the rest of you resides for now and ever. Your ashes fit into a tiny metal box and we have chosen the simplest, purest ceramic urn for you. You can't imagine the ugliness of urns. Urn designs are very, bery strange. I don't think you would have wanted a dolphin jumping into the sunset airbrushed onto your biodegradable plastic urn? See. I figured. Your urn looked beautiful. Your death date was wrong on the metal box inside... they wanted to place the ugliest cross onto your grave with a black veil around it. argh. Really strange, again. But your friend and I came prepared, a very sleek and simple grey slate bears your name for now, until we find the perfect gravestone.

I love u. I love u. I love u.

And it doesn't get better. Everyday I wish you were with us. I wish I could hear your voice and I wish I could tell you everything that happened these past weeks.

We went for lunch afterwards. I left Tonie with the sitter. She slept through your burial.

It is late in the afternoon now and I am waiting for them to return from there walk right now.

I miss u. I miss u. I miss u. Come back. Come back. Come back.

I love you. Now this process of dying and burying is behind us. Today I saw you for the first time since your death. The last I saw of your face, bedded in synthetic sheets with a cross, roses in your hands. Have you ever imagined yourself in a coffin in your living room? I believe not. And I am sorry the coffin was so... wooden. The images of our last weekend together are anchored into my mind. Sometimes they are hard to deal with, sometimes they help.

The day draws to a close. Thomas is back. Tonie is asleep. This was the last of the ceremonies. The last step of knowing you will die. Beginning in August when they found the metastases in your back. Knowing you will die.Waiting for and dreading your death. The weekend you died. Seeing you dead. The funeral service. The first weeks without. Your burial. The lunch after. Now the weekend after.

I love u and miss u.