to Lola

a second mother's day without her. the day has changed for me. it is now a day of reflection, of remembrance, of honoring who and what she was. the list is too long. i wrote it all down when she died. who she was, what she liked, what she didn't like. she was so many different things all twisted into one huge person that touched so many people in so many different ways. old friends still comment on how they remember her, her laughter, her anger, how she scared them, how loving she was, how she always insisted that you eat even if your weren't hungry. she was bigger than life. and then life happened to her. she suffered in the end. but she still laughed, everyday. it was my sister mission to make her laugh even if she didn't understand what she was laughing at.



i loved her intensely. We loved each other. Too much. I will never be able to understand why we couldn’t tell each other that. We were so afraid of hurting each other, of disrupting the balance we had created between us. It was an unspoken love. We tried to protect each other, but inevitably we hurt each other, by omission, with our words, with our gestures, with our silences. We were too much alike. The intention was never to hurt each other. We saw each other as the same person, in different times and space. She needed to hurt me to free herself of what she held inside. She wanted to free me in order to free herself. She sat before me once at a moment of complete despair and told me I could leave. She thought she was freeing me. she didn’t realize she sentenced me to my death. She told me to go away from her. Was it for her or for me – this freeing? I will never know. Instead she died in a state of unknowing. But she was kind to me. she loved me unconditionally and without regret and without holding back. She loved me openly and freely and with laughter. She held me and touched me and yes ….she told me. she told me .. that she loved me. that’s what I carry with me.

happy mother's day Lola!