Dear Mama,

How has it been a year now since you’ve been gone when it seems like just yesterday you left?

Your baby, that stoic youngest granddaughter, she worked so hard to keep you here with us, and you know how she never cries really, but when they told us you’d gone and that she’d done a damn good job and honored her grandmother, she choked on her tears and wiped her eyes, and all her adrenaline and love for you showed on her beautiful face as she shook the hands of the paramedics and the troopers and she hugged your dear friend who was there with her and with you…for every step and every breath.

Mama, you know how we don’t have many exciting days here on the farm except for those days that all of a sudden bring BIG excitement—remember that time we all were out the door and packed up in the truck before you even knew what was going on and then five minutes later, your grandson was pulling a stuck calf out of a tired cow and you and I held hands and cried a little at the miracle of life there at our feet and you were so proud? Or all those times when lambs were sick and the whole household shifted from low-action to rallying-around and you got to hold the baby while your baby granddaughter made warm bottles and took temperatures? Mama, you leaving us was one of the highest activity days we’ve ever had here at the ranch, and when they took you away, we all did what we knew to do and went to lunch at your favorite pizza place up the road and we sat around the table and we debriefed, and we were together, and we couldn’t believe you were gone.

We had things to do, Mama, you and I. You and us. We had bonfires and family holidays and game nights…and so many hugs. Your baby boy had just gotten here from all those miles away, over four thousand by road was what kept your little family—our little trio— apart all this time. One week was all we had, us three together, and I’m not mad, Mama, but I thought you’d live out your days with both your babies in the same time zone, and we’d laugh around the fire for many years, all the years left of our lives.

But it was just one week and your precious friend, she told me when they took you away that you were the happiest she’d ever known you to be that week. Having both your children here, being safe and warm in your precious little cabin…she told me you were at such peace.

And I know that, Mama. But it doesn’t stop me from missing you.

Mama I’m not gonna lie. It was a rough road watching your mind slide away. And you know me, Mama, I am a tough cookie and I always made you be tough too, so you wouldn’t forget how strong you were, because I always knew your insecurities would overwhelm and make you forget all you’d overcome. So I’d tell you, “Mama, you have to push back. Mama, you have to fight. Mama, you can do it. Mama, YOU are the boss.” And your chest would get big and you’d remember that you ARE strong. You’d remember that you ARE the boss. You’d remember that you CAN do it.

And sometimes I wish I would have been gentler with you. Oh, I know you’d tell me I was gentle. You would brush it off if you ever heard me say that I was too rigid. You’d tell me it was just what you needed and that I am your Daniel and that you just needed a swift kick in the rump to help you remember who you are and what you’re made of. But sometimes I wish I would have just given you more hugs and been sweeter and softer and called you Mommy like I do now that you’re gone. You would have liked that. You loved all the names I ever had for you…Ma, Mama, Mother, The Mom, Poppy, Mamisan…I never called you Mommy though, you would have loved that.

Because you were a mother above all else, Mama. So much of your life was thrown at you, shitty and ugly and horrible and things that never should have happened to a woman let alone a child. But you had these two people born out of your body and everything you did after that was for them. For us. Every decision you made, every change you pursued, it was to better you, in order to be better for us. You were good to us, Mama. You gave us everything you had.

Mama, when your body started to take your mind…Mama I did everything I knew to do. The doctors’ appointments, the tests, the hospital trips…Mama we talked about Mayo, that place that saved our Matthew…and when you wanted to stay close to home, this new home where you felt so safe, we made that work. Sometimes I wish I’d pushed harder, Mama. You might still be here now.

But is that fair of me to think, to wish?

Would I want you here still as your mind continued to slip away, keep you here over knowing you now walk in peace and wholeness, completely safe and pain free with no tears of past hurts and no fear of what is to come?

I am grateful. Every time I’ve thought of you this past year, Mama, which has been every single day, I have thought of the goodness of God to bring my sweet, strong, fragile shell of a hurt mama right on up off the road she had ahead and just take her straight from her warm bed in her blessed little cabin she loved so, straight to the place she so wanted to be…Heaven. Mama, as much as I miss you, I only have joy knowing that you are exactly where you wanted to be.

Remember, Mama, when you told Jesus you were His way back when you were a girl? And how hard you tried to teach us, even as you got messed up messages from the world and the people who should have taught you true? Remember how you and I talked and when we went over your wishes for the remainder of your life and I asked where you wanted to go when you left this world and I was thinking of your body and wanted to honor you with laying you to rest wherever you wanted, you told me, “Well, honey, I want to go to Heaven.”

Mama, thank you for that lesson. You were a teacher during your career, but Mama, you were a teacher to your family and those who loved you, too.

How you loved Jesus. And how that love grew as your years went on, to the point that all that mattered was that love for Him and the people He gave you, and the little creature comforts in life like a cozy bed and a cozy cabin and favorite foods around a table with your favorite people.

Mama, this world has gone crazy since you left, and while most days I would give every penny I had just to be going on a coffee run with you or scanning our next vacation house on that favorite island we love, there is another part of me that is thankful you are not here to see all of this. The hate. The division. The ugliness that has taken over, and even though I know you were beginning to see it too, I am glad you don’t have to see how bad it has gotten.

I will never forget the day you came out of your room on that sleepy Saturday afternoon, when like so many other afternoons, you watched the news on your phone as you played puzzle games on your iPad, and you woke me gently as I dozed in the recliner, and your face, so troubled, you said hesitantly, “Cassy?” When I startled awake and asked what was wrong, your brow furrowed and tears came and you told me quietly, “President Trump has been shot.” We turned on the television then and realized that he was okay, but that the world had shifted even farther off-kilter, and I know that troubled you, Mama.

Even worse was the time we were in front of the television yet again, watching a church service this time, a Sunday morning when we just weren’t able to pull it together to get all of us to town, so you and I sat in my living room, hot coffee steaming in our mugs, and I let you use my old study Bible while I used the new, large-print version I was breaking in. We tuned into the church app on the TV and our Bibles were opened, and I looked over at you, and you were crying silently and holding onto the photo that I’d had tucked into the middle of my old Bible, that one of our whole family the last time we were all together years before. When you were able to speak you told me, “I miss my Daddy. I miss my brother.” And I cried too, because your daddy was gone a decade by then, and your brother had decided during the pandemic that he was no longer speaking to his family. Mama, you held that photo and you cried, and we did watch church, but I promise you after that I tried everything I knew how to do to get your brother to call you, and Mama, I can only hope that the love you felt from all of us here was enough to make up for the love you were missing. I’m so sorry, Mama. I wish it weren’t that way. In families or in this world.

And that is why I am glad for you that you don’t have to be here now.

As much as I miss you here now.

How you would tell me I’m doing a good job, even if you didn’t understand exactly what job it is I am doing. How you would always offer to help me in my work and do your best when I gave you papers to fold or ribbons to write on. How that made you feel needed and important and useful.

How you would listen to everything I ever wrote and tell me how good it is.

How you would beam at your grandchildren and love every last thing they’d do and be so proud.

How you’d tuck in between all of us at church and stand as long as you could for songs, handing me cough drops from your pocket as we sat and snuggled during the sermon.

Mama, I miss you, but I’m glad you don’t have to be here for all of this.

Your ashes still sit in their fancy box on the bar in my kitchen, but I know where your spirit is. I took a little baggie full of your body’s remains over to our favorite place and Mama, you would have loved to have been in on the quest that it was to pinch out little pieces of you all over the island at all your favorite places, and you would have cried with me when I put the last of the dust from our little Kauai urn at the base of a big old tree at that beach you and I loved to sink our toes into. It was my last day there this winter, Mama, and I didn’t know how much it’d twist up my heart leaving little bits of you in that place you’d come to love. And then leaving. Mama, you know me, I’ll go back…am already planning the next time over, but that was the last time you and I would go there together, and I know it was just your dust, but that’s all I have left here with me, and sometimes Mama when we’re left here on this mean old planet that is being ugly and fighting, being with our mama is just what we need. When she leaves us, it makes the world even uglier and emptier somehow, and even if just your dust, I get to carry it with me and remember.

Mama, dementia is an ugly robber, and all the people I follow on social media who are walking the desolate path of it, they’ve said goodbye to their parents now too, or some of them are still watching their loved ones decline. They helped me understand while I had you here with me, and now, I try to help them understand what it’s like when a parent leaves.

We had a beautiful memorial for you, Mama, and oh, you would have loved it; all your favorite hymns and some island music too…your friends came out and all those who love us, and because they love us, they loved you too. I thought the whole day through how much you would have loved that, sandwiches and root beer floats that your granddaughter rounded up, handling the kitchen like we always loved to watch her do. You and I would have made a day of that, just like we did at Nettie’s when we were so touched to be amongst her family and her memories. Lisa came all the way up here to be with me, and she stayed in your sweet cabin and loved feeling you there, laying her head where you always did. We sat in the sun and put together a puzzle of poppies, and it was beautiful, and the only thing missing over morning mimosas was you, laughing and delighting in the just sitting together, loving together…you did that so well, Mama. We did it well, too, in honor of you.

And now, it’s been a whole year since you left, and I don’t remember another single year of my life that’s changed me as much, and here I am writing you a letter, just like I learned how to do in this class I’m finishing up. You would’ve loved this class, and we would have had so much fun with it; I always felt like you were my classmate, always listening to my assignments and stories, thinking long with me about words and sentences, listening to books with me in the truck as we drove around watching birds and drinking our tropical Lotuses.

This author we’re studying, she tells us when we don’t know what to write, to just write a letter to one of our loved ones. You would really like her; she’s become a friend to me. I read her book and I think of all the books you read me when I was little, and all the books you read to your students all those years, and all the books you and I listened to on our little road trips. How many books have we read, Mama?

And now I am writing them. Well, at least this one now, twelve years after that first one you were so much a part of. I write sometimes and think how you’d laugh and laugh over this one, maybe even cry too, because there is so much of you in there, so much of me, so much of so many people we’ve loved all these years. I promise I’ll write our cheesecake book, too. I still have our shared-notes file on my iPhone, that one we started that year we celebrated your birthday over steaks and cheesecake, not just one day, but two. I’ve added some scribbles since then, but it’s not the same writing them without you, so I’ll save it for later when my heart isn’t so tender missing you.

Your grandson still fishes and hauls them out of the sea and when we cook his catch I remember how much you loved the fish so fresh. Your oldest grandbaby, he came to see me this winter, well, to see his dad really, but he and auntie spent a lot of time together here in this little shack they all built me last fall, this place where our tallest baby, that youngest grandson, hung your favorite painting above the door for me here where I stare out at the weather each morning and think of what it must be like for you in Heaven now. Are there mornings there? It’s a funny thing when your mama leaves, because even though you’re gone from here, I know you’re there…and you’re living a life separate from the one we live here, but somehow, we are still connected like some sort of spiritual umbilical cord. Was it like that for you too, when your mama left earth?

You were so brave, Mama, and so strong. I have thought since you left about how much you had to overcome, and how sweet and determined you were as you faced the path ahead of your mind going haywire right along with your body.

Mama, I won’t tell you it was easy or that it was my pleasure or that I was ready.

There were a lot of times it was frustrating and difficult, and I wasn’t ready for the season that came on all of a sudden and in a surprise. But Mama, it WAS my pleasure. And it took you leaving for me to realize how much of a pleasure it was. An honor. How I got to know you in ways I never did before. How your vulnerability and trust in me revealed how much you really did love me all the years of my life. How your peacefulness and comfort amongst your grandchildren and my husband, and your complete trust in their abilities and confidence in their care for you showed me what you really thought of them, of me. How your joy in having your two children in the same place at the same time brought you such joy and assurance that you had complete peace when Jesus called you home.

He and I will go get a Lotus today, Mama, your favorite kind, all tropical and coconutty, and we’ll talk of you, just like we have done on so many days since you left. This one is different though, because now Mama, I’ve finished one whole year on this earth without you, the first year of the rest of my life without my mama in this world, loving me. It’s a strange and disorienting feeling, Mama, when your mama leaves this life and starts the next one, and while I won’t ever be sad that you are where you always wanted to be, I won’t ever stop missing you being here with us.

I don’t know what a year feels like in Heaven, Mama, or if there are birthdays there or anniversaries or celebrations of how much time you’ve been there, but a year ago today, you got there, and Mama, I hope, I know really though, it was the best year of your life.

I so look forward to seeing you and until then, I’ll miss you terribly, and will always, always love you and be grateful God made you to be my mama.

I love you,

Your daughter