A Bittersweet Reminder

I want to explain about one of the things that enhanced my triggering when I was around my family on Thanksgiving. Although many of you know that a few weeks shy of my 15th birthday, May 2010 my mom died in a car accident, but far fewer know that my mom had a twin sister that looks just like her. Thanksgiving day was the first time I had seen my aunt (mom's twin) since before mom died. She was a bittersweet reminder of my mom. It's hard to explain just how conflicting, sad, wonderful, beautiful, and disturbing it was to see a copy of my mom. It affected my dad too. I kept seeing him look at her and smile the same way he smiled at mom, but he would have to turn away from her to keep from becoming emotional. Our family is a hugging family, when we meet people or visit with family we say hello and goodbye with a hug. When my aunt walked up to dad  to give him a hug, I saw dad reach his hand out to shake her hand instead. Like I suspected she would do she ignored the handshake and wrapped her arms around dad.  She then walked over to me and gave me a hug. After she walked away dad stood next to me and I rested my head against him and I swear I could hear his heart breaking. His hands were shaking. Neither of us needed to say anything. We were both thinking the same thing, we felt, heard, and saw mom through her twin.

My mom and dad were highschool sweethearts, each others first love, and each others first. They assumed like anyone who is in love that they will grow old together. Mom's death affected all of us deeply, but in different ways. I lost my mom and teacher, but dad lost his firsts. Last year I heard dad crying a few times when he thought he was the only person at home. I felt so bad for him, but until this morning I have never let him know that I heard him crying. We had a long talk about things and I suddenly realized how lonely my dad has really become over the last 19 months. For lack of a better description I gave him my blessing to date. It's weird that a 16 year old will give their dad the green light to date.

Well, I'm getting off track from what this post was suppose to be about, but I still think I sort of explained the gist of it. In a future post I want to share some of my memories of my mom, I am way too emotional to try to do that right now. I need a hug, I know daddy will hug me and I'm going to go hug him when I get done posting this.