Bittersweet

I drove to work yesterday, listening to Klove, as usual....I just love this contemporary Christian music station.  A beautiful song came on, that brought tears to my eyes and a warmth to my heart.  As I sit here typing this, I get misty eyed all over again.  This will be our second Christmas without Mom. And I, all of the family, miss her very much.  So as the song "Different Kind Of Christmas" came on, I felt it fill my heart with remembrance, sadness, and smiles all at the same time.

As I listened to the words, I felt the melancholy of missing Mom creep into my heart.  Anyone who has lost a loved one knows, that even as the years go by, the memories and the missing don't really fade away.

But the end of the song, where it talks of the remaining family around the table, brought a special kind of joy to my spirit.  Over the last few decades, my Mom was almost the last one from her generation, the last of the "matriarchs" as it were left in our family.  She was the one who held everyone together, who prayed for each of us, who talked and counseled....the string between us all. She was the heart of our family.  But as I listened to the end of the song...and thought about our family, I realized that she left a beautiful legacy.  And the heart of the family was the love she shared, and the sense of family handed down from her and her sisters....they all left us a legacy.  And we, all of us together, are that heart of the family now.  And I know that they are filled with joy as the wait for us to join them in heaven, seeing the connections and love between those left behind.

Yes, we miss those who have gone on before us, but they live in our hearts and in our love for one another...Thank You Mom and Aunt Alice, Aunt Julia, Eileen, for leaving us an inheritance of family to carry on.  And I am thankful for my Aunt Kay, as well.  Even though she married in, (we never differentiate blood from married to, in my family.....family is family!), she too added to our closeness and connection.  I know she and Mom considered themselves "sisters."  And even though she now has alzheimers, she is truly the last Matriarch of her generation in the O'Connor clan.  What a blessing You have given us Lord in our family.  Thank You.