One year...

A year ago at this point in time, I was facing the loss of one of the most important people in my life.  

My own mother...

And to most of us that would create a feeling of sadness and loss.  

Yet, her loss in my life also created for me a new sense of freedom.

Honestly to this day I love my mother.  I have striven to always honor and obey her.  Sadly my failures in being human and prone to making mistakes did not always create the best relationship with my own mother.  She was the type of person who liked everything in a very neat orderly manner...  and in my world it was just a little too neat and orderly.  I could never understand how moving the garbage can a millimeter was such a matter of life and death.  Yet, in my mother's world it was just that.  And since it was such a big deal to her, it also became a big deal in my life of mistakes that I was lectured about... punished over... and eventually started to just understand that I would never be perfect enough to be the daughter that my mother needed, and at times I would wonder if she was even happy with the very fact that I was born.

This desire to be perfect for my mother was not an idea that came to my mind in an instant, but one that would be created over years.  And it is only now that I have come to understand that it was not just an issue of how my mother communicated to me, but also an issue of how I understood what she was trying to communicate.  I spent years lost in trying to understand how to prove to my mother that I really loved her...

It was only in the last few years before I lost my mother that I began to understand that she had spent so many years trying to communicate to me that she did love me...  I just didn't hear the message.  All I ever seemed to hear was how much I fell short of the mark that I thought was set for me.... Perfection!  

In the days right before my mother died...  she said three little words that I still hear in my mind.  Years I longed to hear these words...  To know that I was the daughter that she wanted...  To know that I had shown her that I loved her...  And in the end... her last words to me meant more to me than all the fighting and miscommunication over the years...

Her last words to me were...  I love you!  

And right now... though I struggle with her loss.  I struggle with the changes of being an orphan...  at least I know that somewhere deep inside of my mother...  

She loved me despite my lack of understanding and perfection.  And maybe for now that is enough!