Just a fog on some days...seems like i almost see you...hear you...and then...my heart remembers it all...

last night as i was wrapping presents for so many new people in my life, i realized there were none for you...and then the tears came...

i had felt odd before it happened...a bit tense and overdrawn..and couldn't quite figure out why i was crabby, out of sorts, not enjoying what i was doing...and then... i knew. i went to the couch and pulled myself deep into the corner and just sat.

and remembered.

i am sometimes so lost in all this. i feel like my thoughts are like a misbuttoned shirt...no matter how many times i rebutton it, it never matches. and my heart feels that way too. trying to live well, yet still my shirt never buttons right.

i have lost my dearest daughter. i hate those words, that they are mine. i sometimes fight the wrongness of that and am so angry, so ripped off...so lost in my lost.

i can get to the side of walking it out again...knowing so many others now who have lost. their is a wildness in the eyes of someone who has lost. i see it. i even see it in my eyes when i look long enough. a sorrow that never leaves them. the worn edges aroung my eyes from tears. from the longing of another word or hug or smile or memory.

one more goodnight song...your wet hair hanging across my legs as you lie on my lap to have me run my fingers in your hair. feeling your full weight as you run and jump on me---even as a 28 year old...acting 5. don't think you ever grew up, sarah c...at least not with me...you were a girl in a woman's body but so easily slipped back into the joy of youth. i miss your joy in this season. i miss the card table up so we could make presents--with all the new ideas we gathered in the year. i have your last list on my computer that you sent to a. barb and i when we went to sagatuck....so many things we had still to do...

lost...in the memories...wires disconnected still in my brain, trying to realign them...to make it make some kind of logical sense, yet logic and sense never will connect in this for me. oh my, my brain is so tired when i am on this street...night hours pass slowly.

missing you tonight, every night...every day. wonder.

wonder so much. what you are doing right now...do you see me, do you know? do you know how much so many people miss you? i miss hearing that answer...that full answer you would have with any question and how you loved questions, learning more about me and everyone. you loved learning more.

and now another christmas--3 now you won't be here...i am trying to get the groove on in my step, new life, new kids, new grandkids who don't know what to call me...how did the buttons never match up? i didn't know life could get so hard...i didn't know i wouldn't know how to live...i never knew it would take all i have and more to do this...

i so need you God. please help in these moments when my buttons don't match and i can't figure it out. please come. please hold me, please kiss my girl too...tell her i miss her and love her. life is not the same anymore...

life is good, just not the same...never the same.