As most, if not all, of you know, my sweet Momma left this earth Monday, March 20, 2017. Since then, I have replayed the last few months over and over again in my mind.

In general, I am not much of a crier. I know people who, upon seeing one tear roll down someone’s face, will burst into tears. I can get deeply moved by someone, whether in person, in a movie, or reading about them, and not leak. Sometimes I do tear up, but most of the time, I do not.

Losing my parents is a totally different story. When Daddy died, it was such a shock. He had a stomach virus one day, or so we thought, and he was gone the next. Not one day went by for over a month that I stayed dry faced. I am finding the same thing happening to me now.

Every day, around 11 AM, my iPad would ring for a FaceTime call. The silence at 11 makes me get wet eyed. I unpacked my overnight bag a couple of days ago, and realized it had lived behind my vanity chair in the bathroom, partially packed, since November. Putting it away in the closet made the tears come. Remembering how Momma loved the view from our decks, how she gushed about any little change I had done in my house and made me feel like the best decorator in the world, how she and Kenn would tease and pick at each other and the laughter that would follow. Realizing I am now an orphan. I want to tell her about the storm we had that knocked power out for many hours and knocked a tree down on a moving car, about the terrible fire in Atlanta that shut down the interstate that we drove on so often, that Casey is losing his hearing and is ravenous one day, and doesn’t care to eat much the next day, that we have bluebird eggs in one of our nest boxes. I want to ask her what arthritis feels like because two of my knuckles are hurting and I don’t know why.

I have little nigglings of guilt, too. I wish I had stayed the last time I was in Texas when Mom was alive. I would have liked to hold her hand and pat her face and tell her everything was ok. While I was very conscious of being patient with her as her memory was going, I wish I hadn’t gotten annoyed when she called the third or fourth time in a day, usually to tell me something she had already told me many times before. Even though I don’t think I let her see my annoyance (or I hope not), I wish the feeling wasn’t there in the first place. I wish she had let me take her to France. I think she would have enjoyed it, since she was 100% French. We discussed it several years ago and I urged her to consider it. But I think the idea of the two of us being in a foreign land scared her.

I know that time heals. God obviously knew what He was doing by putting our lives in a timeframe while He lives in none. Many years ago, I got my parents to fill out a book about their lives, as I did my grandmother before them. It’s my generation’s turn to fill them out. I remember the day when I could reread Grandma and Daddy’s book and smile instead of cry. I look forward to that day with Momma’s book. In time.