By Luellen Hoffman

My mind is confused about my mother being gone, even though it’s been a couple years since she died.  I feel like I can’t fathom the fact that she is not only gone, but “gone forever”.  I try to understand what that forever part means, and logically I get it and I talk to my brother Michael about it, but for some reason I just can’t put my intellectual reasoning around it yet.  This concept of “forever” is too big for me conceive.

Little things remind me of her, like pansies.  She loved pansies and would always have them as the first flowers of spring in two little pots on her front porch.  So when I see pansies I automatically think of her.  There are so many little things I could tell you about her, which I didn’t realize I knew until she was gone, because they are tiny and insignificant by life’s standards.

Why are these tiny memories being magnified now? I have no idea, probably this is just a lifetime habit, of knowing her and being close to her.  She always kept track of us, calling or writing, she was never far away and with that connection gone, this emptiness is probably a part of the bereavement process.  This understanding of being, “gone forever” is especially hard because she was “always there” and I miss her.  I wonder where she is, I wonder what she is doing, and I wonder what it is like to be in heaven?

Right now I feel so indebted to her for everything she so unselfishly gave to me as her child.  All the things I learned I learned from watching her and she taught me about love.  She made me who I am by just being my mother and my life with her was precious.  In many ways she was the perfect mother, but with that said, she also wasn’t always easy to understand, from my perspective anyway as her daughter. But now as a mother myself with my own adult children, I see how wise she was and how she knew me better than I ever realized.

Losing my father had a big impact on me, but it seems small compared to the loss of my mother.

I am sorting these feelings out, day by day, but they surprise me since my mother has been gone for a good while.  There is a quiet void inside me for not getting her anything this Mother’s Day.  I’m not sad, like I was at her funeral, but I find myself marveling at who I am, and where I have come from.  It is a feeling of great responsibility since I had her as my mother and from her I was given much love.

Luellen Hoffman is an adjunct professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and has a successful career in the Washington, DC area. She has won top awards and recognitions from, VNU/Nielsen Business Media for her outstanding people and communication skills.

Hoffman is a feature writer of a children’s column with a Chicago based magazine for over fifteen years. She also created an equestrian scholarship at Dartmouth College in 2002. Her husband Michael died unexpectedly in 1994 which led her to write this book and share her experience of a Special Dream in hope of reaching out to others who may be have had this same unique experience. She has two sons, enjoys art, music and sports.

Tags: Depression, grief, hope, signs and connections