Back in August of 2012 I wrote my first blog. Not to be famous or to bad mouth others but to find an outlet for my own feelings and emotions. So this week was the anniversary of one of the traumatic events that got me to start writing.
This week is also Mother's Day and the Kentucky Derby. Now I know that in most houses none of these things have to do with the other but in my house the Derby and mom and grandma always went hand in hand. Mom and Grandma were both from Louisville, Kentucky the home of Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby both their birthday's were withing a week or so before the Derby and just a few weeks before Mother's Day most years. Going to the Derby has been on my bucket list as long as I wanted to go to Times Square for New Year's Eve which I did for the year 2000. I am far from a fancy person but for that day I will wear a dress and flat shoes and a moderate hat but none the less appropriate for the Derby. I will drink mint juleps as though it were my God given right. The only thing I won't be able to do is call mom and grandma when I am done with the day and tell them how wonderfully long the day was and how amazing the hats and the clothes were and the number of famous people we see that day.
Today as most Derby Day's I watched the pre race festivities the early card races and enjoyed the call for riders up, the Post Parade and the singing of My Old Kentucky Home (which Brian used to believe was a song written about a house I lived in, in Kentucky) update babe: I never lived in Kentucky. Still makes me laugh. And then the fastest 2 minutes in sports. A new person at work was sitting with me this week and I spoke of the Derby and she being all of 20 years old did not know what the Kentucky Derby is. If you have somehow read this far and don't either please Google it or ask Cortana or your friend Seri.
So I did not talk on the phone today through all of this or watch with mom and grandma as we have in the past. One year we took the kids all down to mom's and made Derby hats and made bets on the race and watched it together. That was probably in 2011 or so. Funny how the time flies by and somethings will always stay with me. Like the Derby that I had 2 of my nieces over for and explained about betting and gave them each a quarter to bet on the race. They may have been 5 and 7 or so but the older of the two decided that she just liked that I gave her a quarter and she wasn't going to risk betting. I told her that was a choice she could make. It was so cute.
I try to share these bits of family history and tradition with the kids and recently I have been reminded by the fact that mom is gone that I have no one to pass my knowledge or love for any of these things on to. I have no children to instill my beliefs in or to share my joys with. This was something that when I was of the age of everyone around me is having children was a reality I did not want to accept, yet here I am of the age where my friends are now becoming grandparents and again it is brought to the forefront in my life. And since with the recent death of my mother I have been reminded of the 5 steps in grieving. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. I realized I have done rather well with my anticipatory grief (fancy term for grieving before the person passes). This is my thing. I am sad before and even though I know I did everything that I needed to do for the person. It may not have been everything others wanted from me, or everything others expected but it was exactly what I could do. But in anticipation of not being able to save the person I grief for their loss ahead of time. I want for one more day while I still have days and want to make better what I cannot change. But after the loss of a person that I have grieved for ahead of time it
gives me acceptance. Something that a lot of times in my life I fall short of accepting myself. And here we are back to the fact that I never had children. It was not for a lack of trying but I always said God and I didn't see it the same way. Even today I have all the signs of grief for a child I never had and life I did not live. I do accept the way my life is and don't want to adopt. This may be fear of acceptance by the child or fear of not being good enough to some stranger. That is all on me.
Since over these last few months I have struggled with what to write at times for fear of sharing someone else's sorrow or opening up someone else's wound I decided tonight that my wounds are the only ones I am speaking of and always have been. I am not going to stop writing for fear of what others think this is purely a selfish act which a dear friend reminded me this morning that I don't have enough of. So I am going to work to accept the things that I cannot change and I will write the things that I would have shared with my kids in hopes that one day someone else's children will find what I have written and think I didn't know that about my family. And that will be my way to share my history with the future generations even if they are not my children. Happy Mother's Day Mom and Grandma (both Grandma's for that matter).
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