Life goes on with new perspective.

Since my mom's death I've felt an extraordinary closeness to the spirit and I'm craving music. Good music. The last several months I've wanted so bad to carry the spirit I feel in my Sunday meetings into the week and throughout each day. There are sporadic times of stillness and peace where the spirit is felt in my heart and in my home, but I wouldn't say that it abounds. Watching my mom leave this earth has changed me in so many ways. I don't want to lose that spirit that I felt when she left. I'm finding that listening to Sunday music all week long is making a HUGE difference for me. I feel the strength of her life weaving through my own life. I have an intense desire to live a more Christ centered life.

I feel close to Heaven. Close to the Savior. Without him I would not be able to hug my mom ever again. All my life I've been taught what happens after we die. Its only until now that I've had to rely and test my faith in this principle. I KNOW it is true. I could stand on my roof top and shout it to the world that I KNOW.

Along with all of this has been the game of catch-up. Life for me, was on hold while I was by my mom's side. Unfortunately time kept ticking while my mom was dying and therefore, bills are due, cupboards had to be restocked and I had to brave Wal-Mart the day before school started to buy school supplies. I DON'T RECOMMEND IT FOR SANENESS.

Through it all there lurks an emptiness. As I drove up to my house after I had dropped the boys off on their first day of school, the thought came to me to call my mom and tell her how excited I was to have only my two girls for 8 hours!! Of coarse, I quickly remembered that mom is gone. (Devon told me that its too bad that there's no cell phones in Heaven.)

It feels unreal. The full puzzle of my life is missing a piece. My friend Tami said, "The universe feels different when your Mom is gone and you feel things that you have never felt before. It feels as if you are in a different world than before, and I suppose that in a sense you are. No one can take the place of our Mom's and there is an empty spot in our hearts, and it is OK, and we will be OK."

I will be OK. There are moments of sadness but life goes on and I have my little family to love and teach like my mom taught me. My children will know my mother because they know me. I will keep her memory alive by living the way she did. I feel a better sense of how to comfort others and want to reach out more to my friends and family. I get to wrapped up in my own life and rarely reach out.

I don't know what I would have done if it weren't for dear friends and family that sought me out and helped me through this. I've felt so much love. Thanks Marilyn and Tiffani, Angie, Missy, Noelle, Laura, Nicole, Libbie, Tara, Janene, Pat, Cheryl, Debbie, Sally, Denise, Doug, Amy, Shelli and Trevor, Judy, Kemi and Chris, Dallin and Devon- my Boys, Dennis and Sandra, DeLynn, Jeff H., Mary Ann, Sherri, and Mel, my brothers, my dad, my sweet husband. I love you all.