I've had the best Mother's Day. My children made me happy and filled my heart with love from the moment I opened my eyes. I finally get it... it's not about your mother, it's about you as a mother. I lost my mom last year and last Mother's Day I just plain missed her. This year was the first year that I enjoyed myself as a mother on this special day, that I took this day to celebrate the best things I have created in my life, my children. I think that when we still have our mothers in our lives, we think about them and about the fact that they are our light, our love, our support... our mothers. We celebrate them, and rightfully so! But it also takes away some of the things we have accomplished ourselves as mothers and some of our motherly feelings just don't quite come out from the inside, we just don't get them. We don't feel them and perhaps we just can't. But I tell you what... when you are the only mother in your life, things feel different. It's all about you and it might just take you by surprise. The love, the pride, the happiness...all of it. 

A long time ago, when Frank was very, very sick, he would get the kids on the bus and off to school in the morning. He then would tell me that he needs to rest because the kids will return soon and he doesn't want to miss a second with them... A few hours later he would sit in the livingroom, watching patiently for that school bus to show itself around the corner. And the kids would run in screaming "daddy, daddy, daddy!"... It hit me so hard to realize that these are probably the last few times they will ever use this word like that and that soon it will not have the same meaning for them. It made me so sad...

This all came to my mind yeasterday when I was trying to figure out why this Mother's Day felt so different. It's because I was the one being celebrated, and only me. My heart was in only one place. I love my mother dearly but the truth is that once people leave us, we put them deep into our hearts and minds and our lives go on without them. We miss them but we are no longer able to create new memories together, no more reality together, no more pictures, no more anything. It all stops and we go on without them. I know that my children will never use the word "daddy" the same way they used to, but I also know that when they bring it back into their vocabulary and when their little children will use it, they will think with love of their own father and they will probably have the same feelings of love I felt yeasterday. A different kind of love.