-Kera (Editor-in-chief)

Love,

Renata Comparini

Happy Mother's Day, to my best friend! I love you more than all the stars in the sky, fish in the sea and sand on the beach.

🌷🌹🌻

My heart consistently aches for your presence. Some days I still can’t quite grasp the fact that you’re no longer here physically. I see you in every butterfly, and know your spirit surrounds me—but goodness don’t I miss you.

I’ll keep your fork 🩵🍴

-Ocean Vuong

Dear Mom,

I can’t believe it’s been almost 4 years. 4 years since you took your last breath; heaving, almost gasping for air in the hospital bed we set up for you in the downstairs office room. The room where we all slept on the floor, rotating each night to “keep watch” or listen for changes in your breathing. It was too late for hospice care, we did what we could to care for you until the very end. I still can’t admit that you are “in a better place now” or “no longer in pain”. Your last gasp for air was more like a plea than a sigh of relief, as if to tell us it wasn’t time and that you weren’t ready. In those early days, my grief used to consume me. The hole you left in my heart and in all our lives was unfathomable. I’ve learned to carry my grief, to build my life around it like tree rings around the center bark. Marking a year of growth, of change, of another year without you.

I have a daughter now. She is almost 2 years old and she is the most incredible thing that’s ever happened to me. We look at your picture and call you “Grammy” but it breaks my heart every time, knowing that her life and your life will never coexist in the same time and space. I can only hope that in another lifetime or universe, your souls will one day meet.

I am starting to miss you more than I remember you.

Love,

Your daughter

I love and miss you so much. My life has been complete hell and I have needed you so much and I know that things would’ve been so Much easier if you were here to help me I love you mom and I miss you and I need you so much. I hope you are happy where you’re please hug my babies for me please and let them know how much I love Miss them until we are together again.

Love always,

Your Sunshine

My existence as her daughter extinguished overnight 

One day she knew me

And the next she didn’t

A discarded memory 

Her child 

How could she?

Forget me 

And all that I was to her

Did I really mean so little?

I felt angry 

Abandoned 

Scared

Bereft 

‘Don’t say you’re my daughter, I don’t have one’  she said

‘Yes you do’ I whispered

Dementia took my mother 

But she replaced her with something else 

Something I didn’t know I wanted 

Connection 

And Friendship  

With a wonderful woman 

Pat

We laughed at life 

Lamenting her not having children 

‘I’d  love to have had a child like you’, she said 

‘I’ll need to tell your mother all about you’, she said

‘I think she already knows’, I whispered.

(She passed away surrounded with love in 2015)

I’d like to close with the words from the book you read to me as a child and I then read to you, in both English and Spanish, at the start of your hospice:

“I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my mommy you’ll be.”

Where do I begin? You were my best friend and a second mommy to me. I loved watching two strong women work together to raise me… my mom always including you because not only did she need the help, but she said “more love for her daughter.” 

People always say after losing a loved one that they would do anything for “one more”… one more day, one more conversation, one more hug but that would be too hard for me. Knowing you were human and I would have to lose you one day was hard enough. I would do anything for you to be immortal so I would never have to experience losing you or a life without you. Then maybe you could dance at my wedding, hold my future children and give me your much needed wisdom. We would travel and laugh and drink whiskey. That is what I would give anything for. 

Happy heavenly Mother’s Day from your bonus child, your best friend and your biggest admirer.