On Monday, we started a new unit in my preschool class: "Let's Move!"  We have been talking about muscles, exercise, etc. and I gave the children (4 to 5 years old) art supplies and told them to draw themselves doing some kind of physical activity. After a few moments, I began to ask them about their art. When I got to the last girl at the table, she turned her drawing around to show it to me. "Tell me about your picture, " I prompted her. "Oh, she said, "this is for Cameron's Grandpa, because Cameron's Grandma died."

Is that the sweetest thing? How compassionate is she, for being four years old?!

I was so touched.

As much as I miss my friend Brenda who died this past spring, missing my mother-in-law is far worse. It is the first thing I think of when I wake up and the last thing I think of as I fall asleep. I see things all the time that I want to tell her about or ask her about, and with every book I read, I feel the gap, because we often discussed what we were reading and made suggestions or swapped books. In fact, the last thing she gave to me was a book I had already read and loved, but did not own: 84 Charring Cross Road. She said, "I read this and I knew you would love it." Well, of course she was right- I already loved it; it had just never come up before in our book talks. But this is just one example of what I mean: everything is less without her now. She is missing in my life more now than in porportion to the frequency with which we actually talked in person: it's the realization that she is completely gone, not just on a trip and therefore hard to reach, not just busy with a volunteer effort and therefore not home right now, etc. etc:

 It's not just that I cnanot talk to her. It's that I can not talk to her tomorrow either, nor the next day, nor the next. Does that make sense? Except, I do talk to her: I hope she can hear me up there (yes, I believe in heaven), and I whisper things up, hoping that she can hear them.

I know she loved life, and loved us, and would want us to mourn in a healthy way, but also continue to love our own lives. I know she would want us to be happy and enjoy our days. It's just this gnawing sense that the whole of our life is less now, that the goodness she spread has diminished, that the kindness she showed in her actions and speech is absent, and missed.

Seriously: everything is less without her here.

But I am sending the drawing to my father-in-law, because: wow. How many four year old children would come up with that on their own? What a sweetheart.

Norma's memorial service was beautiful: so many faces, all with that look that said, Yes, I loved her, too.

My husband and sister-in-law and brother-in-law did so well in honoring Norma during the service, with treasured memories, a favorite passage, etc. The remembrances David and his sister wrote were just perfect. The pastors involved were wonderful- personable, sincere, authentic and open and vulnerable- after all, they really knew her. They felt the loss, too. The music director, who played a piece that he sort of improvised, but which was based on a familiar hymn? Well, he was just a spark of light with that offering, with his goodbye. One thing Norma always loved was music.

Because Norma knew her time was limited, she was able to plan her own service to a great extent, and the feel of her was everywhere during the service. She chose certain songs, she chose certain photos, poetry, Bible verses. Her personality was present.

A week and a day before she passed away, Norma asked me if I would read a poem I had written for her at the service when the time came. It was a poem I had written specifically for her, to accompany a photo in a book of watercolor paintings I gave her for a birthday. I had just gone through the book and started writing poems for the pictures that struck me the most imtensely, and one of those paintings happened to bring to mind the woman herself, and the fight she was , in fact, still waging at the time.  She was in a temporary remission when I wrote the poem, but even though cancer took her, I believe that ultimately, she still lived - and died- in such a way that cancer did not win.

It was part of a birthday gift I gave to her at one time, but now it is my I-will-miss-you.