Thank you so much to everyone for their comments below, emails, cards and phone calls. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful and caring internet family. Through this all, you have given me so much support, and I’m so thankful for all of your kind words. You don’t know how much it means to me and my family.

First things first, here’s all the information about the funeral arrangements:

You know, it’s so strange to have to go and make funeral arrangements. Luckily for us, my mother had talked it over with my father and Fatima and made most of the arrangements herself, so we were just left to telling the funeral director the things on my mother’s list. I don’t know how she could have done it, from picking out the type of coffin to deciding what she wanted to wear, to when she wanted the funeral to be. When we came to a decision that she didn’t make, like what to put on the prayer cards, we were lost.

The last couple days have been a daze for me. My family is doing pretty well, though you can see that beneath the surface of smiles and ‘Thank you, we’re getting along okay’, we’re barely holding it together. I’m constantly on the brink of crying, and anything can set off the flow of tears, which I have mastered the art of stopping before they actually fall. My life has been a series of ‘firsts’. The first time we came home after the hospital, knowing she would never come home again. Our first night without her. The first time we went to church without her. Thanksgiving. Christmas, and our annual family picture. Things that will never be the same for us.

Through all this, I am thankful for our family and friends, who have been at our sides all the time. Our house is constantly full of people, our phone rings off the hook. They help us to remember her by telling stories of my mom’s life, and it makes the pain a little less. We’ve cried a little, we’ve laughed a lot, which is how she would have wanted it. It’s great to be surrounded by love.

I guess the hardest time is at night, when everyone goes home, when we’re just left on our own. That’s the time that your mind really starts dwelling on it and thinking too much, the pain comes back and you start to feel how much of a part of your life is gone. Sure, she’s definitely in a better place, but here on earth, there is a hole in our lives that she has left. She’s still in our hearts, but we have to get used to the fact that she’s no longer in our lives.

I hope that my mother’s Heaven is a good place. Because, it’s a given that she’s in Heaven, there is no one else I know who deserves to be there than her. And I hope that in her Heaven she can see us, and feel the love and loss that we feel in her passing. That Heaven is filled with the things that she loves most - the love of her family and friends surrounding her, ‘Wheel of Fortune’ playing all the time, the Bulls still being a Championship team, 50% off clearance prices at the stores, pantyhose that never runs, broadway musicials, food so good that she forgets her name, the smell of roses, and peace. She’s looking down on us, I can feel it, and I know she’s smiling.

Tags: Daily //