Matt,  This Sunday is Mother’s Day.   My fourth without you.   I actually had to stop and count the years.  I was so shocked and breathless that I needed to count the years on my fingers like a preschooler.   May of 2015, 2016, 2017 and now 2018.   Four years and I’m still having trouble believing you won’t be calling or walking through my door.

Today is only Friday but I feel that familiar grief grabbing onto my chest and starting to tighten its grip on my heart.   I’ve tied hard to not go there.   To forget that this Sunday is that day.   The one that honors all Moms.   Unfortunately,  every other commercial shows kids and flowers.   Smiling mothers giving hugs and kisses to their precious children.

I’ve kept very busy today.   Cleaning out closets. Exchanging winter clothes for summer.   Cleaning like the energizer bunny.   Trying to keep my brain occupied and away from what is coming.   As fate would have it, or maybe it was you, a box of pictures fell from a shelf to my closet floor.   I found your smiling face staring back at me.   I could no longer fight.   Seeing your picture, knowing there would be no more shattered the pieces of my already broken heart.   I slid to the floor and cried out like a wounded animal.   Raw, guttural sounds flying out of my battered soul.

I tried to resist looking further.   But my hands were already searching through the scattered prints searching for more of you.   Pictures from years ago.   You and Mike standing side by side.   Two precious smiling faces.   Brothers 1 year and 20 days apart.   People called you Irish twins.   I called you double trouble.   I never remember seeing one without the other.

Memories of past Mother’s Day flooded my mind.   My two boys running into the house.   Hands full of buttercups and dandelions.   “Happy Mother’s Day”  your little voices shouted together.   When you got older, my gifts became more sophisticated.   Pieces of jewelry or a hand painted picture.

After Mike left for the Coast Guard, you realized how much he was missed.    You never failed to remember my day.   A card, flowers, or a surprise visit.   Distance never mattered.   You’d leave your precious beach and spend the day with me.   You were never too old for a hug or to say “I love you, Mom”.

Now, I’m left with precious memories.   Cards from Mother’s Day long ago.   Oh God, how precious they have become.   Treasured pieces of paper signed by you.   I’ve kept them all these years, never thinking they would become so priceless.   I run my finger along your signature remembering teaching you to write.  Never thinking that one day your unique signature would be something left behind that would bring both joy and unspeakable pain to your mothers heart.    Both my boys so precious.   One now gone forever.

Mother’s Day, once a day I looked so forward to has become a day of loss.   Memories of two boys becoming men.   Always showing up together to surprise their mom.   Both so handsome, sharing childhood antics that bonded them forever.   Stories kept secret from Mom, being shared with howls of laughter.   Mother’s Day now so different from anything I could ever have imagined.

This year I will give myself a gift.   I will allow myself the luxury of tears.   Tears I hide from the world will flow as I remember you as a young man.   Bounding through my door with flowers in your hand.   Your handsome face.   Your smile filling my heart with joy.   I will allow memories to fill my mind.   I will reaffirm that I will always be your mother and you will always be my son.   Our connection continuing through time and space.

I will pray for a sign, a feeling from you.   Your gift to me on this most painful day.   Be the rays of the sun gently kissing my face.   Be the tender breeze whispering in my ear.  Be that puffy cloud or the cardinal in my garden.    Be with me in spirit as I remember your love as both a child and as a man.   My love for you will live on forever.    A bond stronger than death.   A Mothers love transcending time and space.    Her youngest son gone.  Forever holding a piece of her heart.