A measure of time

How do you measure time? Let's say four years of time.

For parents : the amazing changes in their children.
For Students : a high school diploma, a university degree
For athletes : the next Olympic Games
For long distance couples : a feelnig of never ending
For couples : a partnership/marriage, either too short or too long
For professionals : just the beginning of a career, or the quick ending of one
For the majority : time to enjoy life working, playing, travelling, hobbies, just about anything and everything.

Four years isn't really that long of a span of time. It's only 5% of one's life if you are 80 year old.
Four years is a very short span of time. It is 100% of one's life to a preschooler.

Four years is a blink of your eye, yet taking the time to think of all the blinks and the tears, it can be just way too much time.

Four years ago today, my mother died. My Mommy. My best friend. My everything.

To me right now, four years feels like forever, yet I will confess to her being gone is in fact a little bit easier in the sense that I don't break down in tears every single time I talk about her, only some of the time.

My mother, Trevor & Ben's grandmother, has missed a lifetime. She died when they were 15 months old, to the day. In that short (long?) four years she has missed seeing them:

- talk
- use the toilet
- start preschool
- swim
- tell jokes
- go to Sunday school
- be in a play
- sing songs
- play the piano
- play baseball
- eat chocolate
- walk the dog (by holding the leash, they still refuse to pick up the poop)
- want to learn every single thing that surrounds them
- play by themselves
- play together
- climb to the highest point of the climbing structure at the park (which is bloody high if you ask me)
- ride a scooter
- go to a birthday party
and so so so much more.

Now she is going to miss them starting school. Real school. Real every day, all day long, with lunch box in tow on the big scary yellow bus, school. This bus will pick them up at the end of our street and drive by her house every day. I KNOW for a fact if she wasn't walking with them to the bus stop every morning at 8:20, she be in her window waving at them. Yes, that would be every day, I promise you that.

Now she waves at them from another place. And I wave to her looking for her hugs to help guide me through this next, very important and exciting chapter of their lives.

You see, I am not ready, not really, to send them away where someone else gets to spend more waking hours with them than myself. My father reminds me, "Your mother went through it too". That helps me, a lot, which will in turn help my babies grow up and gain independence to explore and savour all that life has to offer. It is not fair that she is not here to see them go. She should be here dammit, she deserves to be here, but life is sometimes not fair. I must take confidence in knowing that indirectly my mother is helping them, by helping me.

Even in her absence, she has a great presence.

And will for the next four years.