the other anniversary

I'm bad with dates. Anything with numbers. I planned to post this a while ago - I mean, I planned it a while ago, and then forgot to post it, head filled up with other things. But it's ok. I never really wanted to hang on to this anniversary anyway, and I was glad when I started forgetting it.

So it's eight years since my mother died. Enough time to grow a startling, original, strong-willed girl from a chubby, sweetie-pie, strong-willed baby. Enough time to make the guy in the dole office look from my passport photo (got just in time for my aborted honeymoon) to my 8-years-older face with scepticism (the fucker!). Enough time to decide to dismantle a marriage. Meh.

It feels long ago and just yesterday in equal measure, I suppose, depending on my mood. As per the depressed negativity post, I think I've long exceeded my grief allowance, I don't think you're meant to talk about grief anymore this long after the fact. Are you? There are things about my mother's death I try not to think about, have told very very few people about and not since closer to the event... but I don't think sharing them will diminish them, and in truth, I'm scared of the guilt and grief and horror that accompanies them: so - I just push it away as best I can. Think about something else. Hope that time will sweep it away in the end, dull the edges and draw a veil, so the emotion that accompanies the memories will get sun-faded too.

But the need for a wise elder doesn't lessen - the older I get, the less I know, the more I miss that particular company. I wish I'd seen her hair go totally grey. I wish she'd got to know about blogging. But maybe the need for a mother never would have faded anyway. Perhaps we all still wish for the perfect one, even if we've got one of our own. I know I certainly sought out alternatives while she was still alive.

Ack, this isn't what I was going to say, exactly. Or how I meant to say it. But, nevermind. My mother was a kind of woman you don't really get here. And, because of this, there is a certain kind of woman I recognise her in, and I'm glad they're out there to be found. I wonder if anyone else can see it too... here's a picture of my mother a year or two before she died.

And here is one of someone else's mother, and grandmother, who you will know from her blog all about mothering, and if you don't, go visit Ms Moon.

And here is a woman who is mid-wife mother to countless women and babies through the years, and still helping us all with the work she's doing. I saw her speak when Olivia was a baby and it nearly made me cry, how familiar she was.

I'm a crappy mother to Olivia in loads of ways, but I still hope fervently that I won't have to leave her too soon. Or stay too long, I suppose. it's a loaded dice.

Ok, I'm rambling. I don't have a post, here, really. I just miss my mother.