“May her memory be a blessing.”
I thought I understood that phrase before but wow, did I ever underestimate its meaning.
Her memory, the richness of her life and relationships and authentic kindness, warmth, wisdom — everything about remembering her fills me with love. Even the parts of her I struggled with in life (they existed too, we fought and bumped heads just as much as any mother and daughter have to) now fill me with love. It’s a blessing just to know that I got her as my mom — that this endlessly generous, loving, interesting human was my mother (is my mother), and the rest of the world only got to love her from afar. Or from close up, but nothing was (is) as close as her love for us. Nothing.
It really is the central blessing of my life to have had her for any time at all, and the memory of her continues to be the most central blessing of my life.
(Alternate titles: ‘Things I to go back to any time it starts to hurt too much,’ which is really to say, ‘The main thing I think about all the time now, because it is the only antidote for it hurting too much.’)
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