Missing my little mommy

It's easy to stay distracted during the day because there's work and whatever -- bright, shiny things to pull my attention. But late at night and early in the morning, when everything is quiet, I think about my parents a lot.

A friend wrote that she's angry because she cannot remember everything about her mom, who died eight years ago, with her whole being. I know that feeling so well. My mom has only been gone two years -- two years and four days short of three months -- and I often feel angry with myself because I cannot remember her voice, her laugh, the smell of her.

I can only say that her hands were soft, but I can't remember how it felt when she'd stroke my cheek. I don't remember half the things about her that other people do. I wish I'd saved every voicemail she ever left me, every card she ever sent me. I wish I had a million pictures of her. I wish I'd known her when she was young, when she was first in love, when she was a mother for the first time. I wish I'd known her better, been a better daughter, been a better friend to her. There was so much I didn't know about her.

I wish so many things.

The last bottle of perfume I gave her for her birthday is sitting on my bathroom counter, and sometimes, when I need a reminder, I'll take the top off the bottle and smell it. But it's just perfume. There was so much more. A couple days after she died, I remember going into her closet and finding a sweater she'd liked. I could smell her on it -- the perfume, her hairspray and lotion, the fabric softener she used, and I kept it, and slept with it for about a month. But it wasn't her, it was just some poor approximation.

Those days feel so surreal now. Actually, every day since she died seems so surreal now. Maybe this is my journal, and I do it now because I cannot remember most of the days since my mom died, and if I don't write it down somewhere, somehow, it will be gone, too. I miss talking to her. I miss laughing with her, watching movies with her, sitting out back on the patio and playing cribbage with her, going to lunch, going shopping, being able to call her and tell her even the stupidest things about my day. I miss everything about her.

I'm angry with myself because I want to write about her life but I don't know enough to do it, and even if I did, I'd never be able to do it right. Maybe she didn't have a famous, glamorous life, but she had an extraordinary life, nonetheless.

I'm angry that I cannot hear her voice anymore.

I'm angry that I often cannot look at pictures of her, and when I do, sometimes it's like I don't really see her.

I'm angry because I remember all the things I said that I shouldn't have, and all the things I should have said and done but didn't, and all the things I should have known but didn't until it was too late.

I'm angry I wasn't with her when she died, that she died in the hospital, with strangers, instead of surrounded by people she loved and who loved her, in her home, in her own bed.

Is this what life is going to be from now on? Just getting through every day, distracting myself? I cannot imagine a time when I miss her less than I do now, because don't we just miss the people we love more and more the longer we don't see them?

Why does it feel so often like getting older is all about everything being stripped away?