Signs....

We are preparing for n's 12th birthday party.  This week has been so long.  For me emotions have run high and it has been exhausting.  I sat for a moment and thought about the month of August.  It is a month of contradictions and has been for the last twelve years.   I celebrate the birth of my daughter on the 6th but it marks the beginning of the remembering for me as it was only three weeks later that my wonderfully funny and engaging mother in law passed away from ALS.  Five months after this my own mother passed away suddenly...  I felt like I was doing so well this year.  It didn't hurt as much as it has in the past but then this week happened.  The loss of Aunt E just brought it all back.  It is amazing how such events become so layered with emotions and thoughts.  Remembering all the loved ones who have gone before and the inevitability that some day you will be leaving your loved ones alone on this earth.  I understand why my Dad in his later years just couldn't go to wakes and funerals.  It is all so very much to manage.  Anyway I worked diligently as I attended the wake and the funeral to not feel the feelings I knew were bubbling up just under the surface; to the point where I counted the blue diamond shaped stained glass pieces in the beautiful windows in the church so that I wouldn't hear the words and music.  Sigh...

So as I sat down today for a moment's break from the party preparations my mind drifted to my own mother.  How can she be gone for 12 years?  I wish she knew my daughter just as she surely wished her mother knew me as a child and young woman.  So I shed a few tears and n walked into the room.  She is such a caring and empathetic child, far more understanding than I ever was of my own mother's feelings of loss and sadness for her own mother.  She hugged me and asked what was wrong then she held me when I told her.  As we stood in an embrace we looked out our back slider and there was a hummingbird sipping nectar from our flowers.  We have not seen a single hummingbird at all this year.  He caused us to pause and watch.  I said to n "Maybe it is Nanny" and as I said that the hummingbird flew away from the flowers and flew toward the sliding glass door and hovered there seemingly observing us as we observed him.  It was a very powerful moment.

Peace!