That feeling of missing Maria has been with me a lot lately. Today, it happened during our family vacation, when we went to see a dolphin show.
It seems to happen the most during peaceful family moments. Moments when I feel like I’m doing well as a mom. Moments when the kids are happy, when we’re out and about, and when we’re actively spending time together as a family.
Today was a hot, humid summer day. And as I held my youngest, my living daughter, and watched the dolphins play just beneath the surface of the water, I felt the whisper of a cool breeze against my cheek, and I felt Maria’s presence as certainly as if she had been standing there next to me. It was like she had just come running over to see the dolphins with us.
It always makes me imagine what she would be like now. But in the moment, it’s also less of an imagining, and more of an experiencing. I felt her moving through the water, and through the air. I felt her emotions, her playfulness. I felt a vastness, and a comfort, and a deep longing, all at once.
The joy and comfort I felt in that moment were such a stark contrast to her actual earthly life. Not even a heartbeat later, I felt the sorrow of her loss. I still wish I understood why she had to be so sick, and why she had to go so soon. Why she couldn’t have had a normal life with us, with her family.
I wonder if anyone else there at that dolphin show felt her presence the way I did. If they did, I wonder if they knew what they were feeling. If they did not…maybe that’s the special gift of being her mother. Something only I get to experience.
This is also the invisible side of my motherhood.
While losing her was one of the worst experiences I have ever had, being her mother was one of the best. Is one of the best. In this motherhood journey I have been forced to learn how to hold space for both joy and sorrow. I have had to learn to simultaneously parent my earthside children alongside the child I cannot touch or see.
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