To Make You Feel My Love

Showing love through laughter

Each year on Mom's anniversary I try to pen an inspiration. Sometimes it is hard to find a topic as you cannot rehash the past every year. You can only put your memories on paper so many times and you can only explain in writing so many times the journey you have traveled. Yet it is still important to pay tribute.

I was going to write Mom a letter about getting married and about this new journey. Then I decided for me getting married is just another chapter and I am the same person as I have said a million times before. Something hit me as I wrote the letter in my head. For years I beat myself up that I did not show my love properly. I wondered if she even knew I loved her. I was a teenager so of course, I was no saint to her. I was never rude yelling or dishonoring my parents in any way, but I didn't hug them enough or share my feelings enough. My Dad respects this about me now and he knows the way I show my love and he never asks for anything more because he just knows he is my hero and I love him more than anything in the world. It's so easy to write feelings for me, but not communicate them... So, it hit me... I realized at times Nick will ask for more out of me showing my love. Instead of writing it in an email or performing a task for you, he wants me to show affection more and to express my love. To me, I think, Wait, how does he not know I love him more than myself, more than the world? I realized I show my love in my own way... thus, I realized I showed Mom love in this way. No, I was not great at telling her or loving on her like I should have been, but I remember standing there by the couch when she was very sick one night. I cried wanting to take away that pain, I told God make me hurt, not her. I would try to cook for her, I remember trying to make my parents a candlelight dinner setting one anniversary, I made her videos of her old photos, I handmade her cards and I will never forget the first time I had my own money to get her a gift and I got her this GAP sweatshirt she loved that was a lot of money for me and we were both beaming... this is how I showed my love. She had to know this is how I showed my love. I cannot beat myself up anymore because I realize I DID show my love in my own way. Sometimes she would come and sleep with me on Saturday mornings for a little bit and just doing that together was love. Watching our recorded TV shows together and sharing whatever food we ordered together. I mean, there are so many memories that show love. No, I was not great the way I should have been, but I did what I could.

Brenda knows when Dad and I hug her and give her a big pat that makes her body vibrate, that means we love her. My dad is better at it than me, but I communicate so much better in writing and in action. I do hug on people and verbally communicate my affection more because I've learned a lot from loss over the years, but at the root of it, I know how I communicate love best. Mom knew this, too, I now believe. So, as I get married, back to the original thought, it is hard doing it without her. She would love Nick and I know she would have loved to go toe to toe with him in a witty argument. Someone asked Brenda and I this year if they would have been friends. I said, Heck yes, Mom would have truly enjoyed her. It's great that the world does keep turning and our worlds keep turning. She will always be here in spirit. It's so important to make others feel your love the best way you know possible. Share it. Make it count.