Grieving still

My mother's passing has consumed much of my time and energy. Guilt, the very guilt I anticipated and dreaded while she was still alive, is a persistent tormentor. I try to assuage it with memories of my devotion to her during her last one and a half years. But the distance that existed for many years prior, and the absence of daughterly love even as I doted on her, leave my conscience in tatters.

And then there's the baffling adulation of friends of hers who have called to comfort me. "But they didn't know her the way I did!", I remind myself - or perhaps they are prettifying history.

But neither dispels the self-doubt.

With C., on the other hand, I don't think I'll ever have to wrestle with guilt. That's probably the one positive thread in the fabric of her life and mine. If anybody had asked me, before her birth, whether I could cope with a profoundly disabled child I'd have unhesitatingly replied "No way."

And how about the love of her little nieces? They are still innocent enough to be "ability blind" as this photo (C. and a niece) above shows.