mother’s day is hard for me.

I talked to my mom yesterday when she called, and again today. It is a weekend that weighs heavy on us, even as much as we celebrate our own mothers, and our own children who made us mothers.

“We took him to the hospital 34 years ago yesterday,” she said. “It doesn’t seem possible it’s been 34 years,” she continued.

“It sure doesn’t,” I said.

Daddy died on that Mother’s Day weekend in 1980. We found Mother’s Day cards he had written to my mom in the trunk of his car after he died. These anniversaries have a weightiness to them, like full storm clouds just before a big rain.

Tomorrow is the 34th anniversary of his death. I don’t think my mother ever returned or recovered from that. I returned, but I didn’t recover either.

The world is so, so full of transient beauty. Perhaps those words cannot exist except in direct proximity to one another.