Good-bye

My mom passed away on January 10. It’s been a week since her burial and everything feels different but also the same. I wasn’t sure I could speak at her funeral but in the end, I did because it’s what she would have wanted.

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These were my words about her…

Mothers and daughters are a complicated thing. But, I was hers and she was mine, Now she’s gone and I’m not sure how I’ll exist in a world without her.

This week I’ve been thinking of what I could say about her and I keep coming back to a line from the third act of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream….

“Though she be but little, she is fierce!”

And, that was my mom. Everyone knows about her fierce sense of style, but she also had a fierce and sometimes inappropriate sense of humor, easing tension and sometimes embarrassing her teenage daughter with a quick one-liner and a smile!

She loved fiercely, deeply and unconditionally! I described her to one of my daughters as a tiny love bomb raining down affection on those she loved. Once she decided you were one of her people, YOU WERE ONE OF HER PEOPLE! She was black girl magic before it had a name! She sashayed so that we could twirl. I know that she would look out at this crowd filled with love, flash that million-dollar smile, do a tiny fist pump and say “YASSSSSS babies!”

She lived fiercely. Confidently. Without regret. She dreamed big, technicolor dreams and then she made them come true!

She was all of those things. But, she was also just mom. Mom who made me oatmeal and toast every morning for breakfast until I graduated from high school. Mom who encouraged my love of reading and art, flowers and fashion. She was mom who held my hand as I became a mom and soothed my heart when it was broken. And when the world was too heavy, no matter how old I was, I could crawl into her bed and she would hug me and make it better.

She always left the same message on my voicemail, “Rae, it’s your mom. Call me! Your gonna miss me when I’m dead and gone”. I’d roll my eyes and say “sure, mom!” never imagining we would be here and how right she would be. I miss her already. And, I’m so sad.

Thank you, mama, for loving me fiercely even when I felt undeserving of it. I’m the woman, wife, and mother I am because of you and the world was a better place because you were here.