I believe in yesterday

My mother has been dead for four years. I never quite know how to handle the anniversary of her death. My sister gets moody, sometimes just on the twelve of any month, not just February. But I don't understand why I should get mad or upset on that day. Every day I feel the weight of her death; it's never off my shoulders. I don't want to focus on the day that she spent in a hospital bed, brain dead, unable to breathe on her own. I want to remember how she lived her life, not how it ended.

I remember warm summer days when we would have marathon Monopoly games. Later, we'd go out in our pool, and I would perform tricks while she would pretend to be a judge scoring my moves. I remember cooking with her in the kitchen; she baked biscuits, and I would always use the cutter to form perfect round shapes. She would let me have the leftover dough to play with, and I created little biscuit faces to cook. As I got older, I got to really cook, and with her guidance baked pies and cakes. I remember being unable to sleep in the middle of the night, and how she sat with me and we talked until I was finally able to sleep. I remember the familiar game we would play: "Do you love me?" I would ask. "With all my heart and soul," she always replied.

I miss her more than I will ever be able to express. But I know that she's not really gone; she will always live on through me. I see the brown in my hazel eyes, and I know that is from her. I look at my hands and know that hers looked so much like mine, large and full, yet delicate. When I'm babysitting Nathan and I feel my patience wearing thin, I find a resolve to work through it, and that patience is undoubtedly inherited from her. She is here, in every breath I take.

My mother was the strongest, most incredible woman, and I can only hope that I can grow up to be like her. I often wonder what I would be like now, if she were still here to guide me to being a better adult. But I know I'll never have those answers. I can only be grateful that I had eighteen years to get to know her, and have eighteen years of memories to hold on to tightly now that I can no longer hold on to her.