My late-mother had been learning to become more tech-savy on her phone the last few years before her death. I remembered one year, my parents had better quality phone than I did. As a matter of fact she took this photo of me in my sister’s backyard. Ofc, when I wasn’t even camera ready. She said that was the point. It wasn’t abt me but the trees that bare so much fruit.

“It’s not about you…”

Today marks four years of her death. Life’s been pretty empty without her presence. It didn’t dawn on me that it was 03-20. I kept thinking her death anniversary had passed and that I was either too busy with my life that I missed it or that it was going to randomly show up again as a life reminder. Which it did. My dates are all out of order this year. I had so many covid death funerals this year and my dates had become so weary. And it’s only March. Lord, help me!

The journey into grief had become slightly easier to pace through partly because I’ve become a creature of habit to fully express my emotions on writing, exploring life out in nature, and living my life through travels.

On grief compared with running exercise: you walk, jog, and when you are ready for flight, you run.

Thus, maybe why mom’s death anniversary date did not occur as merely important to me this year was because I’m transitioning to finding peace and solid ground. Today, I am doing just fine!

Truly, this is what I want out of death. If I ever was to die, I don’t want people that to mourn my death to the point they are suffering. I too, want them to celebrate a life worth living. I want them to see what I didn’t see when I was walking this Earth. I don’t want them work so hard for money to be kept tight in the banks, need to have enough vacation time, or save that dress for a “special occasion.”

Do it all. Embrace that heart beat. Go catch that heart skipping. Love your life like you mean it.

My mother was a mom of a true testament of faith but she had mostly preserved through Love. I saw more of her love after she passed. And I miss that part of her sooo much.

Her humility to love others was astounding. She loved until the day she left. None of my family really got to see her die in the hospital. She feared we were too busy, no one to take care of our kids, or that we were tired from working.

Although it is extremely sad I often times hear her tell me, dying is not about me. It’s living life to bear fruit.

I can’t believe it’s been four long years, Kuv Nam.

It’s your birthday today, mom.

Well here on Earth, it is your birthday. Though you no longer take a trip around the sun, like how we say to our kids, the orbits still run its lap and we are back to fourth laps without you in our race. You taught me well, mom.

I’m still running my race, mom.

Happy Birthday in Heaven, kuv nam. You would of celebrated fifty-eight earthly years with us. I believe there is so much joy in the Heavens that we don’t see. I know you are celebrating the happiness you feel away from all this hurt and pain of this world. Until then, today I’m feeling your absence and memories in my heart. I’m reflecting what is good and how I yearn for you, on this day, year after year. I love you so much, mom. ❤

I’m running this race for you!

I always feel like I’m lucked out at night when it’s my turn to share the drive on roadtrips, whether they are long or short trips.

But tonight God spoke to my restless heart.

“Here, take a seat, and enjoy the view.”

We had just finish a few days of leisure travel into Wisconsin and Illinois. All I wanted to do was rest, capture the view my way, and maybe not having to drive us. That way I can take pictures. Ofc, the view comes when I’m driving, so can’t do photography there.

Afterall, I drove us there and had always been the driver predominantly in our roadtrips. Exception is, if we flew into vacation and rented a car, my husband would drive us around. But any prolong trips, my husband physically cannot tolerate long drives, and that’s where I come in.

Tonight, I started to whine during the transition coming home; partly because it was starting to dusk, sunsetting was near, the climate changed from above freezing in central Wisconsin to freezing temps into Minnesota. In my defense, we are almost home. Just only you know two hours away.

Neither do I nap in the car, I mean why should I? But why should I drive too? I’m on vacation as well. Car naps are also so uncomfortable. And the inner mother in me is 90% of the time staying awake to make sure my kids are safely napping in the back, making sure their necks aren’t hanging or gliding side to side, and ofc, staying awake to keep my driver company.

It was then I heard God speak over me when I took control behind the wheel.

“Don’t you want the view? Come, see what I have to show you. Don’t you want to spend time with me, child?”

“It’s been about you, you, you!”

Sou left a long playlist of Hmong Christian songs for me on Youtube as he drifted off to sleep. I drove in the silence and meditated on peace, serenity and love. Reflected on the homecoming travels and my plans for the upcoming new year; I drove home with gladness. And I wept quietly into the stillness of the night. I am so very blessed, it’s 2022, I am alive, and I am so loved by my Heavenly Father, everyday.

• 

Happy New Year.

My hope is that we start the new year off right. Keeping God in first place.

I also vow to write more in this blog. Today’s world is everchanging.

May you be blessed and find yourself in Sweet Jesus peace. Come, he’s saved you a playlist of melodies to life and a view to guide you; if you’d only allowed. God’s already trusting you in the driver’s seat, go far, and go the distance.❤

I haven’t had time to cook “Quarantine Meals” like half of my friends on Facebook. I’ve been in and out of the office buildings due to Covid-19 work. But tonight, it was calling for rest.

Tonight’s dinner my husband helped me cooked a remembrance meal of my late-mother whom passed away–two years on 03/20. My mom loves corned beef brisket that goes on sale every St.Patrick’s holiday. Since her passing whenever I see corned beef at the meat market; despite being Irish (or not) in any of our bloodline, I’d buy it and cook it the way she has been cooking. We’d all sit around the table for dinner and I fully express it to my kids abt how great a mom she was to me and to all their uncles and aunts. And, how great of a grandma she could’ve of been, had God stalled her time on earth.

The other plate was fish patties made from fresh caught lake crappies and walleyes from the ice fishermen sneaking away on Saturday. Same love story here, using my grandmother’s full recipe; Sou made a delightful meal in remberance of my grandmother as well. Puj’s earthly birthday was 03/08.

I miss them both so much. Grief gets better on paper, I tell ya. The compassion and generosity they leave behind is a story so astronomical and faultless. From recipes of comfort food to bringing families to the tables; I love their legacy and I’m reaping it–All of it, and savoring the momentums. I hope to live long enough to see these moments re-played.

However, I am sharing deeply what is vital right now is that I truly appreciate my husband. He is my best friend, my guide, and my teacher. During high times like this; his words run short, but his actions spark joy and kindness. He is golden to me. Only he can do these things with his heart and not take credit because he knows how valuable I am by his side. I figured I am molded well in this because God sees a true reflective partnership. ❤

Grief almost doesn’t end. I find myself this year wanting to get over you. And get over everything that has been said and done but I’m still living and longing for you, kuv nam. How much longer, does one wait? My heart is pouring over and over again.

We are back to December already. A whole year has swept us through. December, your least favorite season of winter. Those kind of seasons that you cursed at because they make you sick and the weather with it being the worst kinds of conditions; ones that causes the cringe and fear in you of car accidents and road traffic, for your loved ones returning home from work. Those dreary days you peak through the four-season porch and quickly mumble to yourself, why hasn’t the sun come out–it’s been four days. Winter is back, but you, you are not back.

A summer rolls away and the new sun comes out, I miss you. A fall leaf is raked and bagged at my brother’s house, I miss you. Twenty-seven bags, I miss you. I find your gloves, I miss you. Then the snow flies, the ice-glazed streets, and then the Metro Mobility buses that slows me down to pick up your grandchildren, I think of you. I think of you on those buses you take to dialysis across town because you tell me they bring joy and contentment in your heart because you longed to see the city scapes. I drive into the city and think about your bus routes and wonder I could’ve shown you the city myself and I then I start miss you again. I break myself over sadness and my loss of you, the years we could’ve have together as mother and daughter, the times that short-changed us without parting words and goodbye moments, oh mom, I really miss you.

There’s just no end to close my memory on you. Your friendship and our conversations just never ends. Even though you’re gone, mom, you’re living in me.

Hmongs have a saying that goes like this; Ua cas es nim tsis zoo le yauv moog ua qhua es yuav rov qaab lus tsev os. How come leaving (the earth) is not like you’ve became a guest somewhere, where you’d go visit and you know how to come back home!

I had stopped blogging my site because I didn’t want to be reminded in my writing that I still have grief in me. I wanted to ignore and brush off my sadness, my loneliness journey without a mother. I wanted to be expressive without writing things down. Only to be reminded that in years time, that I am again will read of heart-felt letters and grief blog sites of my life without you in it. It will all become of what seems-like-of only rants of how much I miss you and how I want to come find you, to beg you, Mom, come home!

But I remember you well, you never left my heart–everyday in my thoughts and in my life, you still live in me. No matter how I dodge my emotions. You, are still my lifesong and my hero. You were my everyday. And today, it’s a memory turned treasure.

Today, at my gym workout I played a song that I used to listen to when you were alive. It didn’t mean much to me then but today, I couldn’t get over it. I cried while working out, cried in the saunas–oh your favorite place to find physical healing. Perhaps, I too, am looking for physical healing. Looking for my mom and my best friend.

Josh Groban sings it quite well when he says:
You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains
You raise me up to walk on stormy seas
I am strong when I am on your shoulders
You raise me up to more than I can be

When I hear the song again after the 20-some-months since you’ve left; I realized you were the memory that surpassed that became my treasure.

I am strong when I am on your shoulders
You raise me up to more than I can be

I miss you so much. It’s going to be Christmas soon. I know I can find you here in my thoughts and writings everytime I tune in. It’s a greater feeling of [indeed an expression] that grieving people should often do, but does not do enough–to write and appreciate their emotions and the tolls that sits and pulls in our grief. Without these challenges, we can’t set sail and motion our souls to find new beginnings. Without the identity of our sadness, frustration, and sometimes anger, we cannot guide others to find light.

Until the next letter in theory of grief or happier times with and without you, mom, Merry Christmas in Heaven and for us too, here on Earth!

No one really counts days unless they are missing something or anticipating a return of something or expecting something forthcoming.

No one counting but my brothers and sisters. We have. We have been counting. The days, the weeks, and months. My siblings and I have been counting the times that have shorten us from a mother’s love, a mother’s moment of embrace, a lecture, a meal, and a presence. You name it, we are lacking it.

The gift of time is such an essence. I love this poem and will share it with you, again.

“5 THINGS YOU CANNOT TAKE BACK

A stone after it’s thrown,

a word once it is spoken,

an occasion once it is missed,

an action when it is done,

and time once it has passed.”

–Author unknown

After passing hundreds of days, today we embark our first ever hump.

And we did it! You helped us! Yeah you, and you, and you! We did it with God’s grace and dignity. God’s overwhelming love of challenges and sacrifice. God’s blessings of true friendship, kinship, and unity in the hearts of many, many people of all kinds that truly loves us, the ones that are motherless, the fatherless, and the weaken in spirits. The kind of love that makes you so weak that when you talk about how much love–you’d cry first without spitting any words out of your mouth. Your love friends and families, it was precious and Thank You from all our hearts!

Mom missed on some of life’s biggest and best occasions; such as my brother’s wedding to his closing of his new home. My middle brother, the one she had the most conversations with, the one she feared life pressed too hard on, and him the one she drew closer to as life was pulling her away.

She missed the enjoyment of another brother’s new home in Newport. The one she lived with for five short months, and had a huge garden visionary in the backyard come spring. She missed seeing how hard my sister-in-law would have to clean four bathrooms on multiple floors. She missed out on the scheduled dinners and many birthdays that were claimed by each member of her family through out the calendar year. Oh Mom!

However, mom did not miss out on how ugly the world became. How the government had ran or closed down many of our most shopped stores like Sears because of finances. She did not miss out on her dialysis center’s decision to relocate to Woodbury. Mom doesn’t miss her eighteen pills being split into morning and afternoon shifts, and she definately did not miss seeing how stretched out this winter was in Minnesota. Oh, you know because the cold chilling winds would have hurted her bones.

She however, has missed seeing chapters on broken relationships coming together for the first times between siblings. She has missed how her death has unsettled some bickerings in families and some are picking up pieces again between fathers and daughters and his sons. She has missed how her widowed husband will carry on. She will miss an entire year again of her grandchildren’s growth and their yearning for a grandmother’s love eachtime someone else talks about their grandma.

Furthermore, She will miss my youngest brother’s college graduation and his speech he is about to make at his party without her. Just how many times, will we endure the without yous?

The year commemorate many chapters of short pages and some rather long ones. People do not count the days, they really do count the moments. But no one really counts days unless they are missing something.

Love you mom, forever engraved in our hearts. Not a day, without you in our thoughts. 03/20/2018.

This month marks the first year anniversary since my mother has left us. This year we also found ourselves soul searching again outside of the home church. We left our church of eight years in December 2018. Though the grieving stages of loosing anything and everything is cumbersome, I find that peace settles in when you least expected it.

I have often resort to traveling as a way of dealing with grief or stress. The countless number of times that I’ve been blessed to pickup and go were the times shared among close friends. A handful of those times, I was given the option to travel without my husband and children. Of course, I jump at every opportunity there is–God-given, when the timing is right and finances are set.

I am blessed amongst those with amazing friends that also allows open schedules to fixate a travel with me. These travels don’t necessary pertain to a mental health intervention nor do we soley focus on my reasons for leaving home. Rather the trip allows me to focus on a soul purpose and to come back with a happy heart. I just needed time away.

Many nights I think back to a mother-less life. I begin to close each chapter of the I-wish-you were here moments to I-miss-you Mom moments, and ponder of the many without-yous. I haven’t moved on, but I’m begining to think that I should.

Leaving my church is the second challenging thing right now that is in transition. Pain wasn’t real until the Sundays that passes started to etch an ache in my heart.

My long for a Christ-like church and friends were gone and some of them disconnected. Some relationships will never be restored and this will be my New Kind of Forward. I have decided that change will always happen no matter what the circumstances!

After five-some days out in the Pacific Northwest this week, my souls find longing in fellowship and I want to be made NEW! I am hopeful of God’s restoration.

After the announcement of our resignations from the church board and membership termination, my crowds of friends got smaller. People whom you count as friends casts stones and turn away from you. A battle within your own circle became a place of choosing.

And maybe that is what this year is. A New kind of Forward.

Shortly into the new year, we found a place of worship surrounding ourselves and children with others who share such joy and victorious godly moments. And it has been well.

My travel today ended in rain, sleet, and sunshine. I thought about my grievances of my mother. How I would have love to hear her chant again about life and the glorious shine of the evergreen treens that is lined up to the snow capped mountain tops.

Except this time my tears didn’t fall easily. My heart was contained in pure joy that only if my mother was still here she would understand. Like losing a battle with death in my mother’s case, we suffered a lost with the church. A control only worth surrendering over to the Lord.

Sometimes losing isn’t about feeling hopeless. Losing isn’t about giving up. As a matter of fact, loosing isn’t almost about winning.

My eyes set heavily gazed through the car window towards the gorge of the Columbia River, my eyes slowly in motionless movement came set upon the mountains. I noticed a significant symbol of a bright colored rainbow arch that shimmered and held reflections upon me from the waters.

At the very moment, I, truly was awakened. I couldn’t shake it off, that the fact whether it was mom waving and assuring me through another yet tough chapter without her, or just simply God giving me the OK to go ahead.

(“For I am the LORD your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.” Isaiah 41:13)

Minutes later, I found myself settled in sweet peace and quietly drifted to sleep in the backseat of our rental. When I awoke at the next stop, the majestic arch of colors whom I saw clearly moments prior had disappeared.

Thank You God for love and protection. The settings of the NW Pacific couldn’t have been a better time to swift the emotions through.

Mom, the mountains was as beautiful as I imagine Heaven was on Earth. Something tells me, we’re going to be ok from here on out. Just OK.

Feels like a lifetime that you’ve been gone, mom. But it’s coming to a year.

Nothing I’ve done has replaced the memories of you and I. The places I’ve gone to I can’t seem to find you. The mountains how high and the seas how low, there is no one that can explain the pains in our aching hearts. You are so missed more than words. ❤

***

A photo had caught my attention as I got up from my work desk this afternoon. I stored this photo ontop of a four-tier shelf style-type drawer. In the early weeks of December I recalled I had turned the dual frame over because, well, it was the Christmas season. While glancing at this photo, I remembered my mom left this photo for us to compile in her slideshow earlier this year. Then a heavy ache in my heart started to set in as I continued to stare at it. Where did this women go, and why is she always hiding behind the camera?

I carefully put my hands on the frame and took the magnetic glass pieces apart. Afterall, during the wake of the funeral, many of the photographs vanished like water down the drain. Relatives came and gone and helped themselves with pieces of mom’s memory with them. I was able to savage a few photos and saved it in between another photo. I noticed her written number, #87, on the back side of the photo. It stood for her chosen photos for her slideshow, her home-going slideshow. 87 of 120 photos, with four full songs of mom’s love ‘wrapping’ the photo slideshow. That’s definitely my mother’s request.

I couldn’t help but sniff the scent of the photo to see if it was alive. And my tears fell. The odor of mom lingered like a piece of her was tucked in there between the thinned-cracked photograph film paper. Like a faded memory, oh mom, where are you?

I’m sitting here blogging this as I reminisce back to that childhood era. Mom. Dad. Grandma. I sit here in the salon as my oldest gets her hair done for our long-awaited Disney Cruise, happening this week. I sit here as my youngest anxiously cries out in boredom and my husband impatiently messages me, “Are you guys done?”

The mom behind the lense is no ordinary mom. She’s the one at the salon when her four year old is crying boredom, she is the mother that tolerates long awaited hair appointments, “couple hours for that color to sit ma’am. It’s called a balayage” warns the stylist.

In many of my childhood, the pictures we get is of eachother but never with mom. She’s too busy to care about inserting herself first so she’s making memories for her children. Is the camera sitting right or is the shutter speed set correctly? She’s the one making sure our outfit matches, and she’s the one focusing her lense in our lives making sure she’s raising good sons and daughters…

Mom, its finally Christmas somewhere. However, the salon is playing, Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven, you must of known, I’m here.

I sure hope Christmas is much more fun in Heaven than it is here on earth. Afterall, Jesus is the reason! And ultimately you would know!

Will we get to see the the famous life photographer again? How I would have love to shift the lense of time and tell you all the details of what you missed out by going to Heaven so soon.. I know there’s a bigger Christmas party up there. God’s got you where He want you to be. Take a selfie mom. Set up that tripod and stack up those photo album to brag to us, mom. It’s been way too long!

Merry Christmas mom. I Miss You, cause I know I don’t belong here in Heaven.

I had a belated lunch birthday not too long ago with my co-workers at a nearby café where we work. We don’t often lunch together but when we do it can be crazy, you know the good ole’ women vibe all speaking at once kind-of-deal.

I remember sharing with them that in the coming months of the spring of 2019, my husband along with Vilany and her husband and another couple are Northwest Pacific bound. “We are on another hiking trip” Like they usually do, they roast me for my adventurous trips. “It’s going to be so cold in the spring there, brr.. snow! And how are you suppose to hike? It’s too cold. I suppose if you can survive death valley in August, you can do anything.” Then they stopped.

That was when it dawned on me. God you sprout beautiful crocuses in the winter snow, and it blossoms beautifully. Why not me? I am determined to make this happen. Tulips bloom in March in the state of Washington. Crocus can happen anywhere in Minnesota. God is indeed God all over. I can do all things in Christ who strengthen me, right?

Shortly after the joke was over, I realized that resilience is here. My life has bounced back after the loss of my mother. The weather is closing up on the Midwest fall and the winter snow has made it’s way–to a full circle. My mother used to tease me last year that if she can pull through another Minnesota winter, she will survive it. After her passing, I wasn’t sure if she knew was dying or if she was pulling my leg and see if I knew yet, of another proverbs of hers.

It’s been a long feel to how a normal eight months in-a-year feels, but the Lord has been good. Resilience is here to stay, I promise. We surpassed another lonely holiday without mom. It was hard to say our Thanksgiving grace this year without tears, and seeing an empty seat at the table but upon that, there were many, many blessings that hadn’t been forgotten about. The love of family was still upon us, and my dad.. he hasn’t left home yet.

Continue reading “Resilience.” →

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