It's so Hard to Say Goodbye

It's been awhile since my last post...almost a year!  As is life, the last few months have been full of many ups and downs.  While there have many blessings to be grateful for, there has also been so much loss.  I honestly think there has not been a month since the start of the year where there has not been a funeral to attend.  This year, many of my friends and extended family experienced the loss of loved ones both young and old.  My family, too, experienced the loss of my grandmother. 

My grandmother, who I called, Mommom, passed away on February 25 after battling dementia for some time.  She had such a strong presence in my life, and I still find it so hard to believe she's gone.  Grief is a funny thing.  It's like one minute you're going along just fine, and then out of nowhere a familiar smell or a memory or a picture or something your kid does, reminds you of the person and there you are a mess....all over again!  Losing my grandmother is not my first experience with death, but hers was so unimaginable.  

See for me, I suppose, I thought Mommom would live forever. To be honest, I thought she was too tough for anything to take her out.  I thought she'd outlive my entire family.  I mean, she was a force to be reckoned with...a real tough cookie.  Of course my mind knows that's not how the circle of life works, but, her presence has always been so huge that I just find it hard to believe she's gone.

Since moving from South Jersey as a young girl, whenever I thought of home, I thought of Mommom...or as my children later called her, Jersey Mommom. Her home was my first home, her phone number was the first phone number I ever knew...back when people had a house phone. So, to say goodbye to her is to turn the page in my story...and I'm not quite ready to do that.

So, fast forward to last Thursday, May 26.  My mom sent me a text to let me know she had created a photo stream (yeah...she's gotten pretty savvy with her iPhone) of Mommom's house.  The house is all empty now and will soon be on the market for sale.  Yup...this is one of those times I was talking about. All was well and I was doing "just fine" and then just like that...I was a hot mess! I didn't look at the pics right away, as matter of fact I waited until I was home and alone in my room.  I opened the first pic and immediately the floodgates were loose and before my eyes were not only the empty rooms that were once filled with all things Mommom cherished, but the millions of memories of growing up.  

I'm pretty sure that nothing prepares you for death.  Even when your mind knows that death may be near for your loved one, your heart is never, ever ready to let go.  We all long for just "one more day" or just "one more phone call" or just one more anything.  Unfortunately, we don't get to know our beginning or our end, so we must make the most of the dash (the time between the day we are born and the day we leave this Earth).

The good news is...our loved ones are never really gone because I believe their spirits truly live on (I'll save my story about a bird landing in my head, a few weeks ago, that I swore was Mommom for another time :-) I do know that it's hard to let go and even harder to move on, but as the lyricist G.C. Cameron put it in the original version of a Boys II Men hit:

"And I'll take with me the memories

To be my sunshine after the rain

It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday."

So...goodbye 7556 Baxter Avenue...goodbye.