I remember you.

I remember how you looked at me. I looked at you the same way.

I remember how eating dinner together every night was a priority.

I remember how you made me breakfast in bed every day. I still make my daughter, your granddaughter, breakfast in bed every morning.

I remember when you told me that you had a cyst. You didn’t tell me that you had breast cancer. You didn’t tell me that you were getting a double mastectomy. I know you were trying to protect me.

I remember when you told me you were going to die. I wanted to die. All you wanted was for me to live.

I don’t remember enough because you have been gone for so long.

I used to dream about you.

After you died, I dreamed about you every night for a year. Every morning when I woke up from those dreams, I didn’t know if you were really dead. Soon I realized it wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare.

In my dreams I used to call our old number, 818–505–8988. I would wait for you to answer, but you never did. Then I would wake up and dial the number for real. You wouldn’t answer then either.

I wish I still dreamed about you.

I wish it was all different.

I wish I asked you more questions about your childhood and your life before me. I still don’t know enough about you.

I wish you had told me that you had cancer — the first, and the second time.

I wish you didn’t have to suffer so much, physically and mentally, for so many years. I know you never told me how hard it was to protect me. But after you died, I found and read all of your journals. I felt like I died over and over again for all that I was unaware of.

I wish I hadn’t made you cry because I was so apathetic in college. It was hard to concentrate during the first two years. As much as I tried not to worry, it’s all that I did. I would call you for days with no answer until someone would tell me that you were in the hospital…again.

I wish I had more time with you than twenty measly years. I’ve endured twenty-six years without you now, but it feels like more.

I wish you could meet your grandchildren. They would adore you, unconditionally.

I wish you could have held them when they were babies. You would have been the best grandmother. You were the best mother.

“The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.” - Honore de Balzac

I miss you.

I miss your soft voice.

I miss your smile.

I miss your laugh.

I miss your advice.

I miss your love.

I miss having a mother.

“Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.” — Alphonse de Lamartine

I am strong because of you.

I am strong because I watched you. I watched you through a divorce. I watched you as a single mother. I watched you do everything. I wish I helped you more.

I am strong because I am you. I always looked up to you. I admired you. I wish I told you that while you were alive.

I am strong because you wanted me to be strong. I will still do anything to make you proud.

I am strong because twenty years with you was worth so much more than the suffrage of twenty-six without you.

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” — Frederick Douglass

I love you.

Forever and always.

“Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.” — George Eliot

My mother died in the summer of 1991. Her maiden name was Lauri Adrienne Lieberman and she was the most caring human being on Earth.

The Hole That You Left in My Heart is My Strength