My mother died on Valentine's Day of 2016, and these are two of my favorite pieces of her art. They greet me every morning when I get out of bed, and I can see them out of the corner of my eye while I am working. My back is turned to them when I practice, so they look over my shoulder.
As I begin to grow farther away from my childhood and adolescence, with all of the things that could have gone better for me, or might have been made easier for me, I also have grown away from feeling that the struggles my parents faced, individually, as a couple, and as parents of three distinctly different children with different needs, have to be my struggles.
I am proud to have struggles of my own that don't involve my mother at all.
When my mother's name and my grandmother's name were read from the memorial book at services on Friday night, I felt nothing but warmth for both of them. I know that their relationship was fraught with difficulties, most of which I could never really understand, because my mother, as a mother of a daughter, put her parental energy into not replicating the difficult relationship she had with her mother.
And she succeeded.
And she put her love into her work, which is hanging in our house, and allows me to feel her love every day.
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