Home is... | Day 137 of my 2023 Journal

I like the sentiment home is where the heart is.  I recently, April 17th, lost my mom.  I’m an American living abroad here in Denmark.  Lost two brothers, both rather young.  One died of cancer at 19 in ‘92 and the other commit suicide at 36 in ‘95.  I remember having conversations with you about being a stay at home mom and I home”schooled” my daughter up until she started in børnehave klasse at just shy of 6 years old, and considered homeschooling after that, but opted out.  My husband just poorly timed a move at the same time I lost my mom, so everything is in an upheaval, and I am in grief again.  Life seems fragile, and family precious.  I’m glad to know you.  You’re one of the people who has treasured motherhood and time together, and I am inspired by your example.  I’ve always had a very real raw sense that life is short.  Now without my mom, I also feel like the one person who really knew me since forever, and really believed in me is gone, so that’s extremely hard, these days to cope with, without breaking down into tears.  Thank you for being you.  Thank you for valuing your family’s close time together and for sharing your experience, strength and hope.  And welcome back.  You’re right home is where the heart is.  For me, it was broken between two countries, and I felt rather rootless.  Long conversations with my mom on the phone were what kept me grounded somehow.  It became a lot harder this past year because of her dementia.  i worried so much about her and the fact she wasn’t in any long-term care facility, but I felt rather powerless to the situation.  I have a lot of guilt over not rescuing her or bringing her to Denmark, of course the healthcare wouldn’t have transferred, and she would have only been allowed to have been here as a tourist and it was too complicated with her medical situation.  Many of the times I called her, it was to remind her of the stories she’d told me, growing up.  So much of our lives is in the interpretation of events.  Anyways, I can’t imagine a world without my mom, but she is a part of how I mother. I still am a stay at home mom.  Music s what seems to bind us back together again, and get us to focus on constructive things, focus, and realize the infiinite nature of the universe and endlessness to learning, and it helps to heal and bring us back together, after my daughter has spent a long day at school.  It also helped me cope with my brother’s deaths back in the ‘90s.  It’s just there are never quite really any real quick fixes, are there?  Healing from grief is a journey like motherhood, it is one of the long haul.  I’m feeling pretty raw right now.  Anyways, more power to you, as a fello mom out there!  Much love to you and to yours.  And welcome home, although as you say, you bring home with you wherever you are, so long as you are together.  it is a constant challenge with screens and everyone on their own little screen, it sometimes feels like it’s an aquarium we live in.  I’m glad to see you out in Nature!

❤️

Monica