Dear Mama, today marks one year since your soul slipped free of your failing body and flew into the beyond, free at last of the pain and suffering you had spent your last year of life in. 365 days since I have seen your face or held your precious hand and longer still since I have heard your voice. It seems unfathomable that I’ve already gone a whole year without you. All of us here are still a little lost and still figuring out how to cope with your absence. It still surprises me that I can’t pop over to the house to see you.

Dear Mama, I spent some of this past year so angry with you. I was mad that you ignored your own health, believing that there was nothing that would happen in this life that you couldn’t control. I was angry that you made choices in life that took you from us way before any of us were ready. I raged against the fact that you couldn’t conquer your pride and personal demons to get the help you needed. After you passed, I threw myself into going through your boxes and boxes of belongings, throwing away lists of chores, notes, and carefully clipped magazine articles. I tossed piles of shiny things you had bought in crates for charity and gave tons of pretty garden decorations to your sisters to take home. I blew through your closets like a whirlwind, giving away anything I could, keeping only a couple T-shirts for myself and one of your favorite blouses that my dear friend B made into ornaments for us. I was in a rage, eager to throw away memories because it hurt so bad that you weren’t here instead.

Dear Mama, I did something I didn’t even know I was capable of doing. I arranged your funeral. I made calls I never wanted to make and tried to write up your life in a couple sentences for a newspaper notice. I wrote your eulogy that took me 2 weeks to even begin, in fact I wrote it the night before your funeral because I couldn’t accept the finality of it all. I wrote paragraphs in a flood of tears and snot, trying to convey my love for you without screaming into the gathering about how absolutely wretched your absence made me feel. Funny to sum up my whole life with you in a simple speech. I think you were with me giving me strength to speak to a room full of people without breaking down. I have books written in my heart for you, mama, so many things left to say. I hope you heard me speak that day and knew I’d done the best I could. I took some of your ashes to your parents’ graves and mixed them in the soil, so you could be with them in your beloved Louisiana, and then I spread the rest on the hills and valleys of the farm you loved. I have a pinch left, and will burn them tonight in a prayerful fire and try to release the anger and sadness that still fill my heart.

Dear Mama, thank you. Thank you for choosing to have me. Thank you for keeping me. Thank you for a childhood full of magic, books, costumes, laughter, and love. Thank you for baby goats in the house and owls healing in the spare room. Thank you for Monty Python, Steve Martin, and Lily Tomlin skits we could recite by heart. Thank you for cutting up my waffles until I moved out, just to show me you loved me. Thank you for loving me even though I was a troublesome child, and refused to listen to your wisdom even when ignoring it hurt me. Thank you for supporting all of my dreams and interests, no matter how silly and pointless they were at the time. Thank you for the effort you put into my weddings, sorry you had to do that twice. Thank you for taking the time to make things special. Thank you for raising me the way you did, though I failed to appreciate it at the time. Thank you for listening to me vent when I had no one else to talk to. Thank you for being my friend and sounding board when the rest of the world seemed to much for me to deal with.

Dear Mama, I’m sorry for being an ungrateful and unhelpful daughter. I am sorry I didn’t do more on the farm or help more around the house. I am sorry for the clothes on the floor and dirty dishes in my room. Having my own kids, I totally get it now. You were a good mama, and I’m sorry for all the times as a teenager that I told you that you were not. I’m sorry that I didn’t grow up completely, and sorry I never got to know you on a more adult to adult level. I am sorry that I didn’t push harder for you to tell me why you were so thin and tired, though I am not sure you would have ever admitted to me that you were sick. I am sorry that you had so much pride that you tried to deal with it all alone. I’d have taken that burden from you if I could.

Dear Mama, the kids miss you so much. I hope you watched from your airy perch when Sophia graduated and walked across that stage. I sure wished you were there with us. I hope you are with them all as they grow into such wonderful people. I know you were so proud of them and they knew it too. You took such care to show interest in them and support everything they did. They will remember that forever, and will tell your stories to their kids someday. What a loss for them, their precious Baba gone before they had the years with her that they deserved. Thank you for helping me be a better mama, for showing me how to raise them, for all the lessons and help. Watch over them as they grow, and be with me as I let them spin from my hands like gossamer out into the world.

Dear Mama, in a way I am glad you weren’t here to what what this country is turning into. I wouldn’t have wanted you to see the way people are turning on each other. The way we have lost our way to brother and sisterhood. The whole pandemic shutdown suited me just fine when it happened. I was so angry and stunned that the world went on without you, that when it kinda stopped, I was just fine with it. Every time I went to the grocery store we used to go to together, or ate at one of our lunch places, or drove roads that we’d ridden together a million times, I was shocked that they were still there without you. How could your absence not be noted by the world. How could things just roll on like nothing was missing? But, life does go on, doesn’t it, Mama? We’re all just a brief flicker of light in this world, before we pass on and the next generations take our place. I understand that, but how meaningful we seem to our own ones.

Dear Mama. I’m going on. I am working my way out of sadness and trying to find my way to the potential you saw in me that I never reached. I’m going to continue to try to be a better mama to my kids. I will try to help my dad more on the farm. I will plant things and then rescue them from my own neglect, haha. I will try to do small kindnesses for others and spread joy where I am able. I will do my best to continue your acts of giving. I will write down our stories because they were too beautiful and funny not to. The world needs an accounting of the silliness and love that our family holds, an anthology of our adventures and mishaps alike. Guide me, Mama, sometimes I struggle with everyday, and trying to find my own joy. It’s pretty hard some days to remember that your love and advice are no longer a phone call or a short drive away. You will never be far from all of our hearts and thoughts, Mama. I know most of us talk to you like you’re still listening. Maybe you are.

Dear Mama, I love you and I miss you with an ache that has yet to ease. That’s about all that’s left to say. We wish you were here to laugh that crazy laugh or even slide your eyes at us like you used to do. Until the day we meet again, we send our love. I will always keep with me the memory of one of the last lucid things you said to me near the end. That shining moment when you stopped trying to walk and grabbed my arm, looked me fiercely in the eye and said, “Jessie, no matter what happens, remember I will always love you, No matter what”. Back at you Mama. Right back at you. Peace.