Mother Dear

Dear Mom,
I told myself that this year I would not mope on Mother's Day; that I would instead find ways to appreciate other mothers around me and celebrate their existance.  I represented the family at the MAMA ceremony (thank you God that you gave me something humourous to say so I didn't put us all to shame with an ironically dull speech about our creative and funny mother).  I sent Mother's Day cards out to Val, Sherry, Sindy Jeske, Grandma Archer, Grandma Wilson, and Debbie (Dan's mom).  I took in 4 months' worth of fermented crab apple-encrusted bottle recycling to contribute money towards the car seat fund our church is unofficially starting. I baked gluten-free brownies for Sherry and Debbie with Jordan (not that either Sherry or Debbie is gluten intolerant, but whatever).  Dan and I spent hours together choosing songs to burn onto a c-d for his mom to enjoy with her new cochlear implant.  Working on the c-d cover art took me hours, but it was fun to do something artsy again.  And Dan burned me a copy of the c-d, too, because it's awesome (and so is he). 
All in all, I was doing pretty good with my positivity goals until Melanie came to visit a couple days before Mother's Day.  Mel felt pretty down about the looming date.  The moment she voiced the words, "Faye, I really miss mom," I felt grief quietly smack me again.  Then at church on Mother's Day people kept coming over to see me and tell me they knew it must be a hard day for me, and they loved my mom, and they missed their own moms, too.  It's strange how sometimes the empathy of others can allow you to feel more sadness than you would have on your own. 
Nevertheless, it turned out to be a pretty good day.  Immediately after the church service I mostly slept through, Dan and I went over to his parents' house and the afternoon ended up cruising by as I sat in the easy-going and chatty company of Debbie and Dan's aunt Elke.  Mel texted me to say that she'd found one of your old journals and I should read it sometime.  So on our way home from Dan's parents' house, we stopped at my dad's house to see if Melanie was home and thus if I could borrow the newly found journal.  The answer to both was yes, so we stayed and chatted with Melanie for a while, then I took the journal and we went home.
I didn't have the courage to read the journal until tonight.  As Melanie told me, in this journal, like most of your journals, you didn't use much of the book before you either lost it or ran out of time/motivation to write in it.  Your writings are sporadic, and mainly focus on prayers for people you know, or recording family events.  I think this was my favourite page:
"Monday August 4, 1997
Took all of the morning and a good part of the afternoon to load the trailer.  Made quick stops at Sunridge Mall and Mike and Shelley's (needed to drop off Mike's sander).  At the latter, while chatting with Shelley, Chasey came running that Adam was getting bitten by ants.  We could hear him screaming and he was almost completely covered in them.  But we think the screams were from Ben trying to wack them off of him with a hockey stick.
Poor Adam."
I have absolutely no memory of that event, but I laughed until I cried. 
I love you, Mom.
See you later,
Faye.

P.S. Thank you for being the kind of mom who used her relaxation time around the summer camp fire to darn my socks.