Yes today is my mothers birthday. I'm waiting for Robert to wake up then we will visit my mothers grave. I've thought about this all week. I know her grave is just a place of memorial as her body and spirit have long gone. I have debated back and forth if I should actually go to her graveside or if I should honor her in another way but I've decided for me this is what I want to do. I know my brother hasn't been to her graveside since we buried mom but I know in his own way he honors our mother. So that's what made me think about this. Not that I'm judging anyone but more of should I be doing something different.
Every time I go the Forest Lawn in Cypress where mom is buried I see so many families gathered to what appears as a BBQ picnic type event. They have blankets spread out, food and seem to be sitting there in groups of 10 or more. Then I remember when my mom was driving she would pack all the grand kids in her car and take them to visit my grandmothers grave and she would sit there for quite some time with the kids cleaning up the graveside and weeding around it.
I think that's part of the reason I go back for just about every holiday. So my mothers grave doesn't sit there unforgotten. Its sad when you go by and you see the graves with no flowers, no tending to. Its as if they were buried there and forgotten. So I go back nearly every holiday and that is my way of honoring my mothers memory. That and the fact that a week doesn't go buy that I don't miss my mother. I often wish I had her to talk to. I use to call her quite often just to talk or to tell her something that happened or ask a cooking question.
I know she would be so proud of my girls and their lives and how they've become such beautiful young women. Dayna is traveling through Europe right now and I could just about hear my mother praying daily for Dayna to return home safely. I can hear her asking me "are you sure its safe" only for me to remind her that she let my brother go to Europe and do the same thing at the same age. Of course she would tell me that's different he's a boy but none the less we would have this conversation.... funny how I can hear it all in my mind.
Robert and I often have momma battles. As we drive along in the car and say "well my momma..." its a fun game we like to play with each other. One day he said "well my momma is a saint" and I replied "well if your momma is a saint that would make my momma a God". And so the game as gone on from there each insisting that their momma was better then the other. Our resent battle of the mommas he insisted that his momma baked cookies for all the little kids in the village. Oh just not any cookies but the "BEST" cookies... OK really i don't think his mother ever made a cookie in her whole life but like I said its a game we play and laugh at each other about the things we say.
In the end we both know how much we both miss our mothers and know that their memories live on in us.
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