Surprise! It's Grief!
It's Mother's Day. Mom has been on my mind every minute today. She is most days, except when work keeps me too busy to think, or I've been able to lose myself while reading or watching something. I just went to the kitchen to consider dinner options. I opened the fridge and started sobbing. No clue where it came from; it just hit me like a train. I have a friend Ellie, who also works with the kids at church. Her mother died two weeks before mine. Their relationship was tough, due to her mom's abuse and undiagnosed mental illnesses. Ellie is the oldest daughter, so she did a lot of the work of raising her siblings. So her experience as a daughter was very dissimilar to mine. But she still has grief today, too. The men took over the kids' Sunday School hour today. No classes, just playing a version of baseball with the kids' singing determining their team's progress around the bases. Neither Ellie nor I wanted to be with the women being celebrated in the churc