6/6/13
I should have written last night when I couldn't go to sleep, but instead I just lay there thinking about Mom, trying to hear her voice speaking to me and trying to bring her into my dreams. I think it was because I had just gotten back from a meeting for Gareth's upcoming co-op toddler class which will start in the fall. She would have loved to hear about it, as she did with Yuri's preschool and her close following of Teacher Tom's blog. Early childhood education was so important to her, so much a part of who she was - and it was a treat to her to get to be a part of her grandsons' development that way.
I miss calling her at the end of a busy day to re-cap with her and catch up before going to bed. We would do this a lot this past year, even though we lived so close. For some reason our closeness in proximity made it even more important for us to not go to bed without wrapping up the day with a text or a call, especially if we hadn't seen each other that day. I now feel the same way with Dad - it feels odd if a full day goes by without talking to him, though that is fortunately rare.
One of the things I replayed in my head last night was Mom expressing what it meant to her to be living in Seattle and being an active part of my family. Before her diagnosis, when we thought it was pneumonia, I had come over to their place briefly with Gareth. She didn't want to get too close to him at that time since she didn't know if she was contagious, but she still got close enough to interact a bit and get him to respond in his delighted way. As I was leaving, she and Dad walked us to the door and she paused and almost exclaimed how she could just hardly believe that this was her reality - that she got to be living here and watching her grandsons grow before her very eyes. I think she said something to the effect that she could just pinch herself. Life was that good to her. And it was also her way of telling me (as she did many times) just how much she appreciated that we wanted them out here and "allowed" them to be such a big part of our lives. The feeling was mutual; their move to Seattle was what allowed us, really, to have the family we always wanted.
