Dear Monica,
Hey girl! I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. Your birthday just past (January 4th – thought about you all day, said a few words to you, did you hear me?) and for the life of me I can not remember how old you are! Which, I’m sure of it, you prefer it that way. And, I know if I asked, you’d say, “Twenty nine.” Then laugh that big Monica Laugh that I’ll never forget. Of-course, I’d be all like, “yeah, yeah, SERIOUSLY. HOW OLD ARE YOU?” I can play out the whole conversation in my head…
“How old do you want me to be, baby?” You’d say.
Four years of mothering has gone by for me, most of them without your support and love. Though, sometimes, I think about you and wonder if you are watching over us, protecting us like a guardian angle. Smirking ‘cuz you’re all like, HA, NOW YOU GET IT, MICHELLE. I know you believed in guardian angels. And if you could watch over your son and my children for an afterlife job, you’d take God up on it. Me, you’d just get a kick out of spying on me and hiding my keys every-now-and-then!
I dreamed of you last night. Dreams about you have mostly made me sad. I was on the phone with you and could tell you were “out of it.” Something I remember from the days when you were alive and we tried to chat via phone. Living cities, and sometimes states, apart never kept us from talking. In my dream, instead of feeling frustrated at your slow speech and incoherency like I did when you were alive, I felt so very sad. I wanted everyone in the room to be silent so that I could hear the few words that you were whispering to me. I miss you so very much. I hope and hope and I hope that if there is an afterlife, I will get to embrace you when I get there.
As a stay at home mom with a chronic pain disability (the same as you) I understand so much better now why you rarely left your apartment. I understand why when you took Darren out to visit with the ducks by the pond the whole experience was so magical. I understand why you could recount each and every moment as poetically as you could. I understand why you took so much time and love in those moments with your son, when you felt good and could move with minimal pain. I understand so much now that I just couldn’t before.
It makes me so sad that I can’t talk with you about it all. That I can’t reach out and hug you. That I can’t hear your laughter the same as I used to hear it. I hope you know, somehow, that if you were alive, we’d be talking and laughing about mothering stuff and relating like we never got the chance to relate. You gained the wisdom of a mother years before I could fully appreciate it. I am sad we can’t chat about all the great things our kids do. All the shitty days we have. How we cope with our pain. I will always feel happiness when I think of the woman you really are verses the woman your addiction made you become (that part makes me so very sad).
You are beautiful, loving, caring, and really, the most giving person I have ever known. And certainly one of the funniest.
Happy belated birthday. I love you. R.I.P.
- Michelle
