Not a hugger

 My mom was not a hugger. 

She wasn't exactly what you would call a warm person but every time I brought someone home she was inviting and gracious. I bring this up today because Google memories are a wonderful and terrible thing after you have lost someone. I was looking through pictures and videos of the kids and was struck by a video from a few years ago. Baby Sterling crawled on the floor and rolled over to look at someone in the background. I wasn't paying attention to the background of the video initially because of course the subject was my cute little baby rolling around. The moment I changed my focus I recognized that it was my mom in the background with her dog Sadie, both of whom we have lost within a calendar year. It struck me because I missed having her just be present. I missed feeling her presence and then it hit like a freight train, that presence and shared experience is something that I didn't know I was missing in my life, the life after mom. She wasn't doing anything of note, just sitting as the dog whined for god-knows-what, but it was the fact that she isn't around to sit on my couch and just be there with my family. She isn't around to give me shit or to show me she cared. I tumble down the rabbit hole of things we have lost because she has been lost to time. It's not that I want her to hold me or hug me at this moment, but her just being there was enough. Her absence is a space I can never fill and I feel it today. Most days I carry on without mention because that is what she would want. She would want me to just get on with it already and stop "moping" but it is the little reminders that cause me to spiral through my grief once more. It is never the big things, as you can brace for the big... but the little things, they hurt and harm in an invisible and silent way. 

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