Goodbye We Said.

This was the weekend of ashes.  It was a collections of hellos, how are yous and goodbyes.  We ate and ate and ate and walked and collected; held hands and hugged.  Closed our eyes and breathed.  Chased and laughed and fell.  We gathered.  We remembered.  We celebrated.  And there were tears, for without her we would not all know each other, and she was nowhere to be seen, but in our memories.

I can remember after she died so suddenly, going to the funeral home to say goodbye.  To see the remains of her body.  I remember feeling so scared to feel her being cold to the touch.  Her hands sat there, so small and soft and I held them.  I remember the small hairs on her upper lip, how they caught the light.  The softness of her skin and the firmness of her jaw.  I remember the tears that fell so continuously in those weeks, ready and waiting, dropping and filling tissue upon tissue.  The endless hugs from waiting arms to catch this daughter as she fell.

Eventually the tears dried.  The grief subsided to the warm rays of spring.  There was a compartment made for hedgehog collections, baby powder and flower patterns.  Life continued and I continued and managed to step forward out from under the sorrow.  Out from under the cloud cover and into the sunlight, into the growth of my gardens on cold mornings and into the passage of time helping me to let go.

As the baby grew inside of me and I could feel it's movements getting stronger by the day it made me long for her calls.  As the tomatoes came into season I wished I could here her tell me about making her favorite tomato tart.  I wanted to hear the stories of what came into season at the market in Brunswick and who she had run into there.  I long for the excited chatter of pregnancy shared between a daughter and her mother.  And as Cecilia grows and chatters and tells stories of her own, creating elaborate scenarios and games I long for the joy and sparkle in my mother's eye as she gets down on the floor once again to play a game, or do a craft together.  I feel so much sadness that they will not know one another like that.

So her remains were poured into the bay yesterday, 9 months and 22 days after her death.  It was a place she loved. 

And I... I released a bit more this day.