Dear Mom,
Time is a strange thing. It’s impossible to believe that tomorrow you will have been gone from our world for three years, yet sometimes it feels like forever since I’ve seen your face. And believe it or not, there are still moments when it doesn’t seem real at all that I’ll never hold your hand again. It’s those moments, when they strike, that move me to tears.
The years have dulled the pain, but there are still moments when it cuts deep and the wound feels fresh and unbearable. There are a million things I wish I could share with you – oh how proud you would be of Jess. The things she’s accomplished, yes, but more importantly the loving, kind, bright, introspective, and passionate human being she is. In the past few years, I’ve seen her blossom like never before. You would be so happy. I see a lot of you in her.
You know, we went to Italy this fall. That was a trip the three of us meant to take, but it never happened. We felt you with us, though. We saw so much that you would have adored – Florence would have been your favorite place, I’m certain of that. It felt fitting that we spend your birthday in a spiritual place, so we toured the Vatican that day. Such beauty – overwhelming to the eyes, the mind, and the heart. How I wish we’d had time to take that trip together before Alzheimer’s came into our lives. Tomorrow is never promised, though, is it?
I still feel angry about the time we missed together; I don’t dwell on it, but it’s there. If you were alive, you would have turned 79 in October, and had it not been for that abysmal disease, you would be a young, healthy, active, and vibrant 79. You would be enjoying retirement, travel, friends, and holidays. We might be baking Christmas cookies right now.
I’ll never understand why life unfolded the way it did, but I vow to make the best of every day because I know that’s what you would want. Even during your long illness, you taught me so much, and those lessons continue to enlighten me three years later. Life is beautiful… and it turns out, the little things are really the big things. I never want to lose sight of that.
In 2016, there will be a new non-profit launched to honor your beautiful memory. We’ll do wonderful things with the money we raise, both to support caregivers and families living this horror right now and to help obliterate Alzheimer’s forever. Anyone who knew you knows you had a way about you – you seemed bigger than life itself, and I promise to keep your memory alive today, tomorrow, and always.
Keep sending the cardinals…
I love and miss you dearly, forever and a day,
Ann
xoxo
Dear Mom…
14 Monday Dec 2015
The Long and Winding Road... 
Just beautiful!
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Thank you so much.
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The comments struck home with me Ann. My mother has been gone 5 years and yet there are days I still reach for the phone to share something with her and she is not there! Thank you for letting us know your Mom.
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Thank you, Dorothy… I guess the need for our mothers is so deeply ingrained in our souls – life goes on once they’re gone, but it’s never the same. I hope your holidays are happy and full of love. ~Ann
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Exquisite. Overflowing with grief and love. Thanks for all you do to make the world better, Ann, and especially the help you offer those with Alzheimer’s and their caretakers. With grateful love.
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Thank you, Elaine. Your kind words always mean so much. May your holiday season be full of love and joy. You will be in my thoughts.
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I cried all the way through this beautiful letter, Ann.
I am now prevented by the legal “guardian” of the person I cared for of talking about him or her in a way that might identify him or her in any way and have had to remove all mentions, stories, videos, and images of him or her on My Alzheimer’s Story.
But I can tell you that the last trip we took together was to Rome. It was in spring 2001.
We went to the Vatican, where we climbed the narrow, slanting, claustrophobic, frightening and winding staircase to the top.
We couldn’t move forward any faster because there was a long queue in front of us as we climbed. We couldn’t turn back because there was an equally long queue behind us. It was close and scary and suffocating. I was frightened, but I tried not to show it.
Once liberated from the holy stairway, we drank in the thin air and looked down on Roma and its environs.
I felt so lucky.
We smiled and laughed and thanked God we had made it up those thousands of steps closer to heaven. The challenge of the journey was past. Now we were free.
Afterward, we went to the Sistine Chapel where the guards clapped into silence the crowds of which we were a part and everyone stopped whispering for a minute or two and then the tide of our collective wonder rose to a crescendo again until it was again silenced if only momentarily by the keepers’ disapproving and corrective applause.
Still later, we drank red wine on a patio with clay tiles and ate pizza at a hole in the wall down the street where Mama told us where we could sit to be warmed by the open ovens from which deliciousness would emerge to sustain us.
My mind may one day forget our time in Rome; my heart never will.
I think you and your mom may have been there with us, though none of us knew it at the time.
The four of us will meet there one day to toast that we once lived in a corporeal world where we made a difference.
Thank you for all you do.
XOX Susan
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((((Susan))))…. And I just cried as I read your beautiful response. I have no words… Thank you. Sending you love and gratitude for all of your good work and the positive energy you put out into the world. I’m so thankful that our paths have crossed on this journey neither of us would have ever imagined traveling.
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