Today is your birthday. You said you were born on Labor Day, which your parents rather enjoyed because ha.
September 2 is always your birthday, but it is not always Labor Day. Like that expression all Singhs are Sikh but not all Sikhs are Singh. Or maybe it is the other way around?
I remember how you used to always ask people like cab drivers where they were from, and I would be all, oh my god, just let people drive.
But this one time we had a Sikh driving us and you said, "Are you from Jalandhar?"
And he was all, "Yes! I AM from Jalandhar!" Delighted.
You'd do random things like that and instead of people being like, just because I'm a person with an accent does not mean I want to talk to you about my homeland, they'd be delighted that you'd taught at a school in Kabul and could still speak Farsi.
I saw our neighbor Marie the other day, and she said she was just thinking about how much she loved sitting on her porch chatting with you. She said you were so interesting, and had so many great stories.
I should've asked you for more stories. I should've recorded them when I had you.
This is your second birthday not here with me, and I miss you.
I've been sick, like flattened in bed sick, for an entire week. At some point last week I called Nick sobbing because everything hurt so much I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't walk the dog.
Urgent care said that what I have is a terrible virus that is going around, and that I should begin to feel better on day 10-14. I'm at day 7 and it is taking its damn time.
It's been brutal. I cannot remember being this sick for this long. Not even with Covid. Which I do not have.
I used to have a lot of versions of the loneliest me imaginable.
This past week I realized that the loneliest I could be was sick, really sick, without my mama.
You would pour me a glass of ginger ale, mostly ice, and leave it on my bedside table. I was dying for ginger ale. I was too sick to go buy any. I kept forgetting to ask the kids.
You'd come in and put your cool hand on my hot forehead.
Even if that didn't do anything, in the same way that throwing your arm across me when you braked the car hard wouldn't have done anything in a crash, what it did was make me feel loved.
You'd be in and out of my room quietly, which was perfect, because all I was doing was sleeping anyway. But I would know you were there.
I know you are fine, wherever you are, and this idea comforts me. I know that what hurts is all the ways that you are not here for me.
Being motherless for me is somehow being less protected in this world. It didn't matter that I'd gotten bigger and stronger than you.
That's not the point.
I wouldn't hesitate to give my life for either of my kids, and I think Jordan would believe it if I told him so, but our girl India, she knows.
She knows she is my heart in the same way that I knew that I was yours. She is forehead to forehead emotion meld.
You know this. When I tell her I love her, she says, "I love you more." And she got that from you.
The other day I had a quick vision of you laughing and saying, "Oh, Lisa, how I do love you."
When people ask how old you were, and I say 85, I know what they are thinking, and so before they can say anything I tell them that I knew you had a big, big life. Because you did.
But that's not what I'm thinking. I'm thinking, but what about me?
When I first saw Nicole after you died, I hadn't seen her in years. She disappeared into a hole after her mom died. She hugged me and said that as it turns out, it doesn't even matter if you have a difficult relationship with your mom. When she's gone, you're flattened, she said.
It's changed my relationship with the world in a way I cannot yet quite describe.
I know ahead of time these days will be difficult, and still, I'm never prepared for how sad I'll be. Birthdays and anniversaries, they really fuck with you.
Anyway, we're all still here, and you're somewhere not here, somewhere I hope is really, really good, with all of our beloveds who also aren't here.
I miss you with my whole heart.
Love,
Lisa
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