Dear Mom,

I sat down this week to write to you with more confessions from my teenage years. However, as I walked through a beautiful park today after work, I was thinking about another topic that I just can’t get off my mind.

Motherhood.

Today is exactly two weeks until my due date. I’m feeling good. Still have energy and still feel healthy and strong. I walked a mile today. Not bad for 38 weeks.

I keep hearing that toward the end of the pregnancy, the baby will stop moving as much. There just isn’t as much room for them to move around. But my baby won’t stop. I feel this baby moving around inside of me all day. It’s usually simply a foot in my side that sticks me and then just stays there for a minute. Or, it’s hiccups likely caused by my refusal to give up on ridiculously spicy food. No matter the reason, my baby is moving and leaving me with a constant reminder that motherhood is quickly approaching. With every bit of movement I instantly smile. The amount of love I have for this kid was unfathomable to me months ago. I can’t wait to meet it and hold it in my arms. This baby brings an unbelievable amount of joy to my life.

But every time I have that feeling of pure happiness and love, every time I smile ear to ear with anticipation of meeting my baby, I am then so quickly reminded that you aren’t here.

Going through pregnancy without my mom was difficult enough, but I can’t imagine how much more difficult it will be to go through motherhood without you.

I’ve joked before about the advice you will never give me, the advice that I would have complained nonstop about not asking for. But it’s never been about the missed advice from my mom. That’s not the part that sucks for me. I can get a million different opinions about how to raise a child from everyone in my life, that won’t be an issue. Plus, I know what kind of advice you would have given me and chances are I would have ignored it. I mean, let’s face it, as good of advice as you were bound to give me, I would have smiled and nodded and then rolled my eyes as soon as you turned away.

What gets me is that you will never hold my child in your arms. You will never look at him/her with the unconditional love you would have so effortlessly provided. My baby will never know the most important woman in my life and that leaves me with a deep sadness that I fear will never truly go away.

It’s a very strange juggling act I’ve got going on here. I can’t wallow in self-pity. I can’t sit around crying over your death, not for the rest of my life. And it’s not like I’m sitting at home crying every night, but I think of you often throughout my day. Whether it’s telling someone about you or me wanting to give you a call to tell you about the random thing I just saw, you pass through my mind daily. And I truly don’t believe there is a problem with that fact. I’m never going to forget you and stop thinking of you. And I don’t think anyone would want that. But I do need to find a way to turn my thoughts of you into a positive.

Pretty soon I will be sharing stories about you with my kid. I will be reminding her/him that they had a Grandmother who would have loved them so much. And I can’t let that be depressing. I don’t want my kid to avoid bringing you up in my presence because Mommy cries when we talk about Grandma Janis.

In an effort to be more mindful and present I want to go back to the feeling I had after your death, the feeling that no matter what, you were still with me. You will always be a part of me and you will always have a presence in my life. So, with that being said, you will have a presence in my child’s life. And I don’t mean that you are looking down at my kid from heaven, I’m not going that route. What I mean is that I will inevitably teach my kid lessons that you taught me.

I will attempt to teach my kids how to dance, preferably salsa, since that was your biggest passion. I will teach my kids how to make the perfect Guacamole and I won’t judge them when they hate cilantro and want to make it without the green herb that I couldn’t stand for all of my childhood. By the way I absolutely love cilantro now and put it in everything, despite my husbands aversion to it, sorry Jeremy.

I will teach my kids how to garden and get their hands dirty, even if I don’t have quite the green thumb that you had. This one we’ll have to learn together.

I will introduce my kids to Motown. In fact, this baby has probably heard all of your favorite Motown hits already since my Apple Music almost always suggests a Motown playlist for me. You don’t know what Apple Music is, it’s a recent thing, but you would have loved it.

Anyway, this list could go on forever. The more I think of it, with all of the fantastic things you taught me about, the most important were your lessons on how to be a good person. Through your actions, you taught me to stand up for what I believe in. You taught me to never give up. You taught me to love myself and to love in general. You taught me to never go to bed angry and to always say I love you when saying goodbye.

These are the lessons I will pass on to my children. These are the positives. I hate that you’re not here. I can’t stand that you will never hold my baby tightly in your arms, exuding love. That does suck and forever will. But I will be able to hold my baby in my arms and look down at this little creature and I will have the ability to give it all of my love and without your teachings and your love for me, I don’t think I would know how to love someone this much. This baby isn’t even born yet and it has all of my love, and yours too.

I love you, Mom. And I miss you dearly.

Rachel