Today is a very hard day for me.  It is my mother’s birthday.  Her death is still new enough to me that I still struggle at times to accept it.  I also struggle against envying others having their mother when I do not have mine, which I know is not right.  I realize some people never get to know their own mother.  I try to remember all the time I was blessed to have with her and not lament the time my daughter will never have.  There is a constant underlying struggle against pain and sadness, and this is one of the days it hits me particularly hard.  I got to thinking about yesterday and power.  I know my mother would not want me to be sad; that it would hurt her terribly.  And so I am striving to use my newfound power today.  I cannot control that she is no longer physically with me, but I can control what I dwell upon.  So instead of crying over my loss, I am choosing today to celebrate her.  My mother was a firecracker; a true redhead who would let you know it if you’d crossed a line with her.  She truly had no tolerance for fools.  She was also quiet, gentle, and sweet.  She had the most radiant, kindest smile I have ever had the pleasure of receiving.  And I was lucky enough to have received it often during my life with her.  She loved me fiercely; just as I loved her.  We were best friends yet I respected and cherished her as my mother.  I still think I can call her sometimes and I feel lonelier than ever when I realize I cannot.  She may have been generally soft spoken, but she had a great since of humor and instilled in me a love of music — from Julio Iglesias to Willy Nelson to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” his Piano Sonata Number 14, which she played effortlessly on our baby grand almost daily.  I lifted great vernacular from her like “a hair” for a little bit, “the air” for air-conditioning, “fire” for heat, and many others.  Her favorite color was yellow, and one of her favorite flowers remained the daffodil.  I did not learn until her death it is a flower that actually turns toward the sun.  That is what my mother was, a beautiful ray of sunlight that beamed upon you with all the warmth of the sun.  When she went into assisted living, her caregiver immediately named her Sunshine and refused to call her anything else.  I thought it was so very fitting.  She also instilled in me a great love of the literary classics with regard to poetry.  I cannot even see to type through my tears.  I am going to quote the poem I read over and over at her bedside as she lay dying.  I read it so often I have it memorized still.  It is from the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth entitled, “The Daffodils:”

“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”

Mama I am trying so hard.  I am trying to smile and be gentle like you.  I am trying not to think about being an orphan or how incredibly lonely I am.  God graced me with your namesake, and I will rejoice in that every day, but especially today.