Mom would have turned seventy-nine today.
Last year, in the immediate wake of her passing, the arrival of her birthday seemed immeasurably sad. This year, I confess, it snuck up on me, because somehow I had willed the sorrow away.
But today my job took me to Panora, a town not far from where I grew up. It all felt so familiar, passing through the melancholy rural landscape, twisting creeks and jagged wire fences and lonely farm buildings no longer used for their original purpose, and I couldn't help but remember.
This was my life once, a life I sought desperately to escape, and I found myself wondering if my rejection of that lifestyle was a thing Mom took personally, a rejection of the life she had married into, the life she had given me, her life.
Probably not--She knew better than that, I'm sure. It was only a passing thought, inspired by the gray skies and bitter rain of a drive down memory lane.
Still, it's the not being able to know for sure, the fact that I can't ask her, or apologize if I hurt her in any way, that is so hard for us, the living. How can we honor the memory of those we loved, when we don't always feel we honored them properly in life?
