A Letter to My Living Children for Mother’s Day

A Letter to My Living Children for Mother’s Day

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Dearest ones,

Mother’s Day is quickly approaching. Each year, I’ve received beautiful hand drawn cards or beautiful crafts from you that I cherish and save. Your words of love and appreciation are an echo of the profound love and appreciation I feel for each of you. Not just on Mother’s Day, but every day. And yet, you know Mother’s Day will forever more be bittersweet for me. Bittersweet because your sister will never again be alongside you to wish me a happy Mother’s Day.

It has been a very challenging road for all of us since the death of your only sister.

You didn’t just lose your only sister and a piece of your innocence that day. You also lost the mother you once knew. After that horrible day, you had to witness a mother who was crushed by the weight of grief. A mother who still loved and took care of you, but was so often sad or tired or visibly overwhelmed.

I know for a long time you tried to hide your own pain from me in an effort to not make mine worse. You tried to take care of me, as I often struggled to find the energy needed to take care of you. I saw you help out more. You followed the rules as best you could. And you checked in on me as a parent checks in on their child. I appreciate all of it more than you know. But I’ll always be sorry you found yourself in that difficult position.

Seeing all my outward sadness since her death, it might appear to you that I think more about your sister than I do of you.

It may even appear that I love your sister more than you. Nothing could be further from the truth. But I’m pretty sure you already know that. I hope you understand that when all we have left of someone is our memories, we may choose to spend more time with our thoughts than before.

You hopefully know just how much I am grateful for each and every day that I have to spend with you. I have tried very hard over the years to show that to you. And despite the pain – or perhaps because of the pain – we have grown a stronger, deeper bond of love and trust between us. We have all witnessed firsthand the fragility of life, and we are reminded that our relationships with each other – and those we love – are what matter most. That is a wonderful gift your sister bestowed upon us that I know will last our lifetimes.

So if I have tears in my eyes this Mother’s Day, I hope you know it is just the overflowing love I feel for all of you – including your sister – leaking out of me.

And while I wish with all my broken heart that she was here with you, it is all of you that help mend that heart each and every day with all the love you continue to give to me. I can only hope you will also feel my love for you each and every day of your lives.

Love,
Mom

The Last Mother’s Day with My Daughter

The Last Mother’s Day with My Daughter

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The difficult thing about memories is that they fade. Most every day moments are lost to time. Even special days. I have lost the memory of the last Mother’s Day I spent with my daughter, Margareta, in 2009. I’m sure it was nice and an enjoyable day, but nothing so extraordinary that it stands out in my mind.

Margareta’s preschool teacher – who is now teaching her little brother, Paxton – reminded me this week that she and I participated in the preschool’s Mother’s Day tea party a few days before that last Mother’s Day. It brought up a fuzzy memory of sitting across from Margareta at a small table sharing cookies and Peet’s tea. Then she presented me with one of the best presents I have from her: a wooden heart with her hand-written message, “I (heart) you mom!” (It still amazes me that at 3-1/2 years old, she was able to write!) She also decorated a wooden box with paint and flowers.

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That fuzzy memory and my keepsakes will have to be enough.

Mother’s Day remains hard for me. I have four wonderful boys who will honor and show their appreciation for me, and I will savor their love and affection. But underneath the surface will still be the painful longing for the daughter who won’t be there to hand me the card she drew or the lovely gift she made in school. I won’t feel the warmth of her hug or hear her beautiful voice tell me she loves me.

I will do my best to temper the sadness with the reminder that I had the privilege and honor to be the mother of that amazing little girl who loved and adored me with all her heart. And that is something I will never forget.

Submitted by Maria Kubitz in loving memory of Margareta Kubitz.

The Anniversary of A Loved One’s Death

The Anniversary of A Loved One’s Death

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Soon it will be the anniversary of my daughter’s death.

Over the years, I have struggled with how to deal with this particular day. It isn’t like her birthday. Her birthday is painful now, but represents a wonderful day in my life. Instead, the anniversary of her death represents the worst day of my life.

A day full of images, sounds, smells, and chaos that I’d rather erase altogether. It represents a day filled with horror. There is no other word I can use to adequately describe it. It may not have been a mass shooting or terrorist act that got 24-hour media attention, but it shattered my heart into a million pieces and part of me died that day too.

The year leading to the first anniversary of her death was agonizing.

Everything that first year was new, uncharted territory. Each “first” – Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, family birthdays, vacation – was like swallowing broken glass. How could we celebrate when she wasn’t here to celebrate it with us? The fact that her birthday is 29 days before the anniversary of her death compounded the stress. These weren’t just societal holidays to celebrate with the rest of the world. They were specifically representative of her.

Coming up on the first anniversary of her death, I would lay awake in the middle of the night. Anxiety overwhelmed me as I wondered how I could possibly get through that day without completely losing it? I decided I would hide from the world that day.

I stayed home like a hermit, and the day came and went. But it was a day full of sadness. A day where I couldn’t hold back the images of that horrible day from invading my thoughts. A day when I replayed the “what if” and “why” questions I had let go of months before.

For the second anniversary of her death, I was determined not to hide in sadness. Instead, I wanted to somehow transform the day into a positive one.

I decided it would become a day of gratitude for the people who tried to help on the day she died. I wrote thank you cards to those who were involved in that day and the aftermath. One of the stops was the fire station down the street that first responded to the 911 call. Taking two of my sons with me, we walked up to the fire house door and knocked.

Three firemen came to the door and I explained why I was there. Two of them said they had come to our house and worked on my daughter. With tears in my eyes, I thanked them for their efforts even though she hadn’t made it.

With tears in their own eyes, they said they never forget the times that little kids don’t make it. While I’m glad I had the opportunity to talk to them in person, it didn’t provide me with the peace I was hoping for.

The third anniversary of her death, I tried to treat the day like it was just any other typical day.

That attempt simply ended in outbursts of anger resulting from repressing my emotions. The fact is, it isn’t just any other day to me. And I can’t pretend otherwise.

I don’t think there is a right or wrong way to approach the anniversary of our loved one’s death.

What “works” for me may not “work” for anyone else. I’m sure my thoughts, anxieties, expectations, etc. will evolve over time. These days, I just take it as it comes and know that it will be a sad day no matter what I do.  I’ll just have to be ok with that.

I don’t really have any other choice.

The Fear of Forgetting a Loved One

The Fear of Forgetting a Loved One

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My daughter died just after turning four years old. One of my biggest fears has been that she will be forgotten. But what does that fear actually mean? What exactly am I really scared of? And how do I combat the fear?

The idea that she will be forgotten is actually two separate fears.

The first fear is that friends and even family will stop thinking of her and, in essence, “forget her”.

In reality, this is the natural course of life. I have beloved relatives and dear friends who have passed and yet I rarely think of them. Does it mean they didn’t exist or have any less impact on my life? No. Nor does it mean I love them any less. What it does represent is that life goes on and current matters occupy our minds.

When family and friends stopped talking about my daughter it felt like they no longer thought of her. And though it’s been years since she died, my daily thoughts are still filled with memories and longing for her. In the first few years of my grief, this disconnect made me feel even more isolated from the “normal” world.

Our society tends to not want to talk about grief or the lingering pain of loss after the funeral is over. So I and many other grieving people go about our business and lead two lives. We have the “normal” life that goes about trying to live and act the way we did before they died. Then we have our “private” life where we still struggle to figure out how to work through the pain of grief. We must learn how to once again embrace the love, joy, and adventures that surround us.

The second part of my fear has to do with me and my memory.

With every passing day, and with all the new information coming in, memories of my daughter tend to get crowded out and forgotten.

All those everyday moments that I took for granted at the time have already faded into the abyss of memories lost to time. With my daughter no longer physically here, memories of her have become precious commodities. Those few memories of specific moments captured in time allow me to momentarily remember not just who she was, but remember life before the pain of her death forever changed me and my world.

It makes me sad that her older brothers say that they have very few specific memories of her. It makes me sadder that her baby brother never had the chance to meet her. He will have to rely on our stories and descriptions of her if he ever wants to get to know her.

To combat this fear, I have tried to write down as many memories as I can – even if they are mundane.

I keep them in a journal, and some I post to www.aliveinmemory.org to share them with others. This way I can refer back to them and share them with whoever is interested in reading them. Her brothers can read these memories and share them with their eventual families.

But I wonder, is my fear of forgetting my memories really necessary? Does it make me a bad mother that I can’t remember more moments I shared with her? Of course not. Does it mean my love for her will fade with the memories? Absolutely not.

I wish I could remember more specific memories of the time we shared with her. But I will try to be content knowing that I will never forget how much I love my daughter or how much she means to me. I will never forget her personality quirks, her vivid imagination, and endless creativity. And I will never forget how her life – and her death – have helped me grow tremendously in my understanding of this life and how best to live it.

A Brother’s Last Memory of His Sister

A Brother’s Last Memory of His Sister

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The last memory I ever had of my sister, Margareta, was from the day she died. I had just gotten home from school, and I asked the usual “What’s there to eat?” All my mom would give me were some left over nachos from Taco Bell, so I took them and headed to my room. Just as I sat down, Margareta came in and started picking some from the box. There was plenty, so I just let her continue. We sat there, and I eventually got out my homework, and she kept on asking what I was doing and how I did it. Eventually she got bored and left the room. Later that day, it turned out to be the worst day of my life, and most likely will be for a long time.

I just wish she didn’t die so young so I could have more memories of her, but this memory will be stuck in my mind for as long as I live.

Submitted by Andrew Creekbaum in memory of his sister, Margareta Kubitz.