I have a writing mentor who encourages us to talk about what is real and present for us with our community, each day.
I have to confess that when what’s on my mind is not happy or entertaining, I often resist sharing.
But today…I will tell you. Because I think that there must be someone out there who needs to hear it.
I’ve been grieving a woman who was like a mother to me. She was there for me the second I met her, even though I didn’t ask or expect her to do this. She told my kids to call her grandma; she worried for them when they were sick or hurt.
One day at the end of April, I received the news that she had passed.
And suddenly…my world doesn’t have a Judi in it anymore.
I keep looking at our last round of text messages…in late January, when she was planning a birthday party for my mom. For MY mom. That should give you an idea of how caring of a person she was.
I didn’t expect it. I wasn’t READY. I can’t believe I had let so much time go by since I last spoke with her.
It’s not the first time this has happened in the past few years.
I keep thinking that I don’t want some random text message to be the last thing that my child knows of me someday.
I don’t want a passing meme to be the last thing my friends see of me before they never hear from me again.
And I don’t want to run into any more situations where I lose someone important before I had a chance to fully express what I wanted to tell them.
There’s so much I don’t want to leave unsaid.
Even though saying it can be so terrifying.
So I write, and I keep writing.
Not just because it feels good to me — the way that designing or making art feels like home, like a hug —
But because I want people to have a way to “be” with me even when I’m gone.
And because I believe that sharing my experience will help someone I don’t even know yet, someone who might really need to hear it — the way I’ve felt countless times, reading words written by others.
I’m grateful to grief for revealing to me what’s truly important to me.
Thank you for everything, Judi. I will do my best to honor you.
XOXO,
Cathy