Asides

What do you think about scheduling a monthly meeting during the daytime hours?

I’ve talked to a few people about resuming a monthly daytime meeting. I probably wouldn’t be able to attend a daytime meeting, but if enough people want to get something scheduled, I’ll send out an email about it.

If you’d like to attend daytime meetings, please leave a comment below.  In your comment let me know what your preferences are in response to these questions:

  1. Do you prefer to meet during a week day (Monday – Friday), or during the weekend (Saturday, Sunday)?
  2. Would a morning or afternoon meeting time work for you?
  3. Where would you like to meet?

Mothers Day

This Sunday is Mothers Day and for the last 30 years, I have been without my mother.  For several years after my Mother died, I could barely go near a card store in the month before Mothers Day.  If I walked by the card section of a store, my throat would start to close up, my heart would start beating hard as I felt my eyes welling up with tears.  I would often have to run out of the store, experiencing some kind of panic attack.

Now, I just avoid card stores and the card aisles of stores most of the time, but the other day, while at Walmart, I cut through the card aisle to get across to the grocery section of the store. I wasn’t thinking about Mothers Day, and there they were….rows of Mothers Day cards.  I felt a tug at my heart and an overwhelming flood of grief. Yes, it’s been 30 years, but I’ve never stopped missing her, and I hope I never do, for if I stopped feeling that grief, then I will feel like I have lost her forever.

A few years ago, I participated in a writers’ workshop.  Every day, I would receive an email that laid out the topic of the day’s writing.  One of the assignments was to write about a day in time I would like to return to and I wrote an essay about my last trip to Jekyll Island with my Mother.  The details of the essay are correct.  I was pleased with how the essay turned out and I’d like to share it with you in memory of my Mom this Mothers Day.  You can read it here (entitled, “A Room With a View”).