Maybe it was because I was driving and thinking of too many things, but I couldn’t for a minute remember how many years it had been. For the first year I could tell you, down to the minute, how long it’s been since my mother had passed. Then suddenly I had a blank moment on main street.

So right there on a major road I pulled over the mini van into a parking lot and got angry that I couldn’t remember the year my mom had passed away. Was is three years? four years? How could I be here? How can I not remember?

How can I FORGET?

I don’t know exactly where I am in the stages of grief, but I know I don’t want to be in the stage of forgetting.

So I sat on the roadside alone in my Honda Oddessy thinking about how my mom never even seen this van, or it filled with three car seats. How she has missed so much, a birth, many birthdays, hugs, games, laughter, campfires, emails, photos, phone calls….four years has gone so fast. How could I forget that timeline. Why could I not remember that year?

I’ve spent a lot of time since my mom passed away rearranging my memories. I know how much she didn’t like sadness or for people to see her in pain. Its not how she would want to be remembered. So I’ve spent a lot of time, trying to remember less of the hurt and more of the Joy

I am sad that I didn’t spend her last Thanksgiving with her, somethings I know I won’t forgive myself for. Each Thanksgiving I remember. After you loose someone it easy to go to the place of would of, could of’s, should of Those thoughts come heavily with grief.

What doesn’t come easily is finding those new moments of New Joy, or living Joy. I think we all struggle with the guilt that new happiness can bring. Its not that we are forgetting our loved ones that have passed. It’s that we are honoring their memory by living our life with joy.

I’ve concluded I’ll probably forget it again, December 10, 2014, but there’s so much I long to remember. Lotto tickets, Well done bacon cheese burgers, card games, lawn jarts, pepsi, holiday de-lights, birthday parties, her love to sing while cleaning the house, sweatshirts and jeans, painting, her laugh, her humor, her strong willed-ness, her passion for party planning, her love for her kids, and her grandchildren, her happy marriage, her always warm and welcoming home.

So now when I am driving in my mini van, I am not sad if I have forgotten her death. What really brings me joy is that I remember her life.