With the quiet comes the radioactive moments. 

The moments where I can't breathe and when I break into a million pieces. 

Today is my parents' anniversary and it hurts to think they didn't get to this day, that there were no more celebrations for the two of them... but at the same time. We will use this day to memorialize the love that they had. If I can say anything, they loved each other fiercely. Through the difficult and the trying times, they were there for each other. That was most evident in the last months of my mother's life. We fought so hard and that was because of the love that was the foundation of their relationship and what brought Carly and me into this world. We had a loving and wondrous childhood full of laughter, and ridiculousness and that foundation is what I base my faith on that my mother is out there. I do not feign to say how she is out there, just that I know that she is. 

She sees us hurting, trying to push through and continue to live robustly and I know that she is proud beyond measure. I remember when she was sick and talking to Brooke, she talked about how Carly and I had these “highfalutin” jobs and just how proud she was of us. It was rare that she told us how she felt because she kept her feelings pretty close to her chest. A product of a rough childhood, we never felt that in the same way that we had a lovely childhood... but there were signs. But she survived and lived a life that is full. She felt the sun on her skin, walked this earth, experienced, shared, and loved. She was stubborn, strong, beautiful, intense, quiet with some things, and verbose with others. There was so much beauty in her. That is what I am choosing to see now. I want to see the light as there was so much fucking darkness surrounding her near the end. 

We are coming up on two months of her being gone and it still knocks the wind out of me from time to time. I am my mother's daughter though. Strong beyond measure, resilient and fierce. I have been told by many that I am intense and that I can come across as intimidating. I got that from her. As much as I am a lot like my dad in temperament, I am still a great deal like her. I used to look at that as something that I needed to correct to be better than where I came from... but I realize far too late that my mother was magnificent. Difficult, but magnificent. She could accomplish anything and that ability is a gift. I inherited that just like my sister did (we clash on that front as we both have our ideas on how to go about things). 

In the quiet, I feel the full force of my grief. It is sneaky and it catches up to me. I am so incredibly busy that when I stop it's that constant reminder that I am hurt, that I am not healed and things still suck. I miss you mom... 

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