Hard day

Mom,

Today is Mother's Day. It is my fifth Mother's Day since I had to say goodbye to you. I keep waiting for it to get easier, but it doesn't ever seem to. I miss you so very much it still hurts. It hurts to breathe, to remember, to cry.

I wish I could talk to you again. I wish I had you here to tell me how to navigate being a wife. I wish you could tell me how to have joy when it feels like everyone around me is getting to become a mother, while I'm stuck in this place. This place of chronic illness and depression and exhaustion. I wish you could tell me that someday this enormous pain that comes from being childless and living with sexual dysfunction would go away.

I wish I could talk to you, because I don't have anyone else. There isn't anyone to listen except my husband. But he's a man, and it's painful for him because he blames himself. And so he can't comfort me because he can't comfort himself.

I wish you were here, because you are my mom and you always knew how to make me feel better. I love you so much. I know you are perfect in heaven, but I wish you were here with me instead.