Happy Birthday Mom!!

On August 25th, 1924 my mother, Ella Celestia Good (later  Olsen Parlette) was born to Aura & Fred Good.  My mother has been gone now for 18 years, she would have been 90 years old today.  She was my best friend, the one person in this world who knew me best and loved me without qualification.  I could talk to her about anything, and did - we had great conversations!  Her family was her everything, and she worked very hard to not carry the baggage from her own broken childhood into mine.  She wasn't perfect, and neither was our relationship.  But I always knew for sure that I was loved and that there was one person on this planet for whom I was the center of their universe.

I remember when she died, one of my thoughts was that I'm an orphan now, no longer anyones child. I was only 32 when she passed and I remember how incredibly alone I felt, knowing I was no longer someones child.  Might sound like a funny thing to say/feel but think about it, it's a very "untethered" feeling, like a balloon just floating free, nothing and no one now to anchor you.  I was not married at the time and I never have had children.  Even getting married a few years later I never had that "I belong to someone now" feeling, although I think that was more a function of my particular marriage, not marriage in general.  But it is a very different feeling once your parents are gone - regardless of your age at that moment, that is when you realize (or I realized) that your childhood is truly and finally over.   There's no one left to ask what you were like as a baby, or hear the story of how your parents met, fell in love, what was going on in the world when you were in your mother's womb, or any of those other questions that remind us of where we came from.  I know not everyone had a good, healthy childhood or even parents that were in love with, let alone married to, each other.  But that's my story, and I'm really grateful for it.  Grateful that I had two parents, for however long I had them, that really & truly loved me, wanted me,  loved each other and modeled that for me.

There have been many moments since my mothers passing, mostly in the last few years as I have begun the process of becoming more conscious to life, that I have been able to see some elements of our relationship that weren't all that healthy.  I believed for years, most of my life, that I was a moody person and that that wasn't an attractive personality trait to the world, men especially.   What I know and accept now about myself is that I'm an introvert, and I can reach a point where being verbal with someone else is simply not possible until I "recharge" by going within and shutting down.  My mother struggled to understand those moments when I wasn't very communicative, and she would push me and keep pushing me, constantly asking what was wrong when there was nothing wrong, I just had nothing left to give for the moment and wanted to be left alone for a while.   But I was exactly like my father in that way, and she either had forgotten how he was (he died when I was 14) as I got older, or maybe it had bothered her about my Dad too, who knows.

Anyway,  I loved my mother deeply and never could stand being separated from her.  I still can't, I still feel like nothing has been quite right since she left.  But at the same time, I believe she needed to go and move onto whatever was next for her, and I needed to be without her for my own self-development.  I miss her, I miss that sense of knowing that all would be right when I was with her.  I miss knowing that for one person, there was no one more important than me, I came first for her.  But I still walk through this world with her love, hers and my fathers,  and that love has molded and shaped me in so many ways, it has given me the strength and confidence I've needed to survive this life without her.  I'm thankful and grateful that I had 32 years with her, that I was privileged to know the amazing woman that Celeste Parlette was (she stopped using her first name long before I was born) and most of all, grateful that she loved me.

Happy Birthday Mom, I love you.