It's Saturday morning at 5.30am as I write. I've been awake for about an hour trying not to think about things but thinking about them nonetheless.....so in the end I gave up with the idea of sleep and just got up !
Sometime ago I wrote about the pain of the journey as being like background music...ie always there through every waking hour but sometimes the volume is much louder than others.....this week the amplifier seems to have been turned up a lot !
Mother's Day started the dirge.....I confess that I really don't know what to do with the day.
I have been very privileged to have excellent parents and my mum is "simply the best". My first mother-in-law is also an exceptional woman and I love her with all of my heart. My new mother-in-law is absolutely fabulous too (we all love visiting !), and Ellie's first mother-in-law is just lovely and has been such an incredible support to her and the children over so many many years.
So we have a lot to be thankful for and to celebrate on Mother's Day in so many ways!
The pain of the day, of course, is that two of my children can celebrate their mum, but three of them can only remember their mum and cannot speak to her face-to-face, they can't give her flowers or do special things for her. I personally find that so so incredibly hard on their behalf. Their mum was an exceptional woman who loved them dearly and I do celebrate that, but it doesn't take away the pain of absence. I miss her so much too but she's been taken away and I can't do anything about that.
So the dilemma for the day was - Do we try to celebrate Ellie as a mum (she's an exceptional mother), how does that feel for three of our five children? Do we do a big "In remembrance" thing trawling through photos which will just make everybody cry? Or do we just ignore the whole thing and hope it'll all go away because that will feel less painful?
So in the swirl of emotions we basically tried to ignore the day....after all, I figured, it's a man-made celebration anyway and lots of other people will be struggling too for different reasons.
It's taken me a week to realise that in all the pain, I never even sent my own mum a Mother's Day card (Sorry Mum- I do love you!!)
In June we will go through the same dilemma the other way around on Father's Day....it'll be another "Beam Me Up Scottie" day which we will choose to ignore.
So what we have decided to do this year is to have a separate "We're a Special Family" Day. We're gonna celebrate this on May 4th just because we can say "May the 4th Be With You" in true Star Wars fashion (I am still a little bit mad!!)
We will do something special then to celebrate our uniqueness as a family and all that God has given to us. Perhaps we will do presents as well as go out for dinner or something like that.
In all the pain and emotions, my experience is that God is ever present, and the Holy Spirit (aka The Comforter) is evidently with us helping us each and every step of the way. Thank God for that ! What would we do without Him?!
