October

10-18-48
That's the day my mom was born. She died almost six months ago. My grief is, well, it is my grief. I never knew what it was before, but now I do.

So to cope with this month, I have a few things up my sleeve to honor my mom.

My mom loved to shop. She loved to buy presents. She loved to get presents. Every year I would agonize over what to get her, always wanting it to be the perfect gift. This year, I don't get to do that. So instead, I have decided I will buy someone else a gift. There are no rules. I can buy the gift for whomever I want, friend, family member, stranger, anyone. I will give them the gift in honor of my mom's birthday. This will happen every year.

This year's gift will go to an acquaintance. We run in the same circle so to speak, but are not very close. I like her, I think she likes me, but that's about as far as it goes. A few weeks ago, a mutual friend of ours, who is much closer to her than I am, mentioned that this person, let's call her E, wanted an ice cream maker because she wanted to make fresh ice cream with raw milk, something you definitely cannot buy. Now, when I was a child we had 14 goats at one time, five of which were milkers. That's a LOT of milk. So one summer, my mom and I made homemade ice cream almost EVERY single day. We tried so many different flavors. We used the old fashioned hand crank kind and it was FUN. This is a tradition I plan (and have) passed down to my daughter. Every summer we make ice cream the old fashioned way. So E seemed to be the perfect person to gift this year. Also, she is a member of the "dead mom" club. So I feel it was serendipitous that this all came together. So she will be meeting me on October 17th for lunch, where I plan to gift her a new ice cream maker (actually it is an attachment for her Kitchen Aid). I hope she likes it. And since she has lost her mom, I think she will understand my need to do this and not feel uncomfortable.

Now, for the rest of the month. October is my mom's birthday month. I refuse to let her month be all sadness. Yes, there will be sadness because I miss her like freaking crazy and it hurts to breath when I think too much about her, but I want there to be some joy. So for the month of October, I am honoring my mom's birthday month with a daily random act of kindness. My mom taught me a love of reading when I was young, so today's gift was I gifted a book to the first person on FB to respond to my post. The amazing part was this person asked for the book Love You Forever. Which is a children's book that will leave you teary. It leaves me in sobs, as I read it at my mom's funeral. Why? Because love never dies. The love my mama taught me, well, it keeps on going. Forever.
Want to cry along with me?

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What's one memory you have of your mom? Share. <3