And yet...

I gotta consistently remind myself of this here lately. 

I am struggling here. 

I am struggling with everything and trying so hard to put on the best game face when I am out and about but it all feels so 

...

Quiet times are not so much...

Quiet times I am left to my thoughts, my memories, the smiles and the tears and the adventures we shared. And I am left with the memory of those final moments, holding her hand after she slipped away, so grateful I had those moments but so DAMN sad that it has gone this way.

I want so bad to watch our wedding video just to see her face and hear her voice one more time but I know that it will make me so damn sad and there you go...

I get hard on myself. 

I allow myself to sit there in the darkness of my mind.

I feel guilty because I know that she would never EVER want me to be sad but at this point and time she doesn't get to say that to me even from beyond because she is not here to do it.

Maybe at some point I can feel better about this whole thing.

Maybe it won't hurt so much.

I am sure it will. 

I went to my grandparents, godfather's, and uncle's grave sites. 

And the tears still flowed. But it was different.

And yet it doesn't feel perfect. For her. For her memory.

I am in the process of figuring my way through how to memorialize her in the perfect way. I am struggling with the possibility that we will not bury my mom any time soon...and to be perfectly honest...I am not sure that I want that either. Traditionally speaking, you go to the funeral and immediately go to the grave site and bury and move forward. You place a bronze plaque on top and have a place you can go to to memorialize and remember and cry and hold and feel their memory closer. Yet her memory is all round me and can feel her presence next to me even as I type this.

I am not sure of anything right now in regards to this whole thing...I have found very beautiful mementos that I can carry along with me. A beautiful small heart container and stand that matches her urn...a glass paperweight that looks like a swirl of stars with her ashes in it... a wonderful necklace of a tree that contains a small amount of her...and its all overwhelming. A tattoo of a prayer found in her writing in her prayer shawl

I can even see myself on that butte in the Badlands having to climb myself to the top of a butte and burying some of her ashes up there...but that is me superimposing my own burial wishes on her and I am not sure that that is right either. She loved Northern Minnesota too, but she also had so many life adventures and am having problems remembering where she loved... 

And yet, her urn sits on the table that my step-sister has arranged as a perfect memorial. Her beautiful portrait that was at the front of the memorial service, photos of our family, her dad, her brother, her prayer shawl...and it feels perfect for right now...as it should be

But I continue to remind myself to just keep breathing...Just keep paddling and treading water in hopes that these waves will pass...