Sometimes I think there are those who believe the three little words, “I love you,”  somehow suggests that you are weak.  How many lives could be changed, or could have been changed, if these words had been said often enough.

I no longer have my mother, my husband, my brother and when I think about it I remember how easy it would have been to have said I love you to them more often and….they could have said it to me more often.  So for those of you who still have your close family members tell them how much they mean to you.  What a difference it will make in all your lives.  Maybe you need to practice it in front of a mirror if it is so hard for you to say the words.  When they are gone it is too late.  “Give them the roses while they live.”

I guess I’m in a sentimental mood tonight and remembering the half of my family that I have no more.  I’m all right until about two o’clock in the afternoon.  By that time I have usually run out of chores or have run all my errands and I think, “Now what am I going to do.”  As night draws near and the sun starts going down I sometimes feel so sad I can hardly bear it.  Then I turn on the TV, find  some silly show, pick up my book that I can so easily lose myself in or go to Walmart and push that proverbial buggy around, gossip with those I meet, buy something I don’t need, get me a frozen cobbler and any of those other cholesterol-filled things that we all love.  I go home, eat a bag of candy or bake the  cobbler and by then I am too exhausted to feel bad.

Finally I go to bed and try to sleep, get up and eat some more cobbler, eat a bag of cookies, read till my eyes hurt, turn the lamp off, jump up and turn it right back on, go to the kitchen and prowl around not knowing what I am looking for.  Maybe go back to the den and sit awhile, turn on the TV, turn off the TV, try to read some more before trekking back to the bedroom or just try to “chill out” on the sofa for the rest of the night.  Sometimes I see the sun set as well as watch it rise and I have still not been asleep.  And sometimes I think about the past for hours on end.  My brain knows you never look back but it can’t convince my heart.  

Now I know all the above is not going to cure sadness.  The best thing we can do is build good memories right now.  Maybe I have said this before but once when my children were small I read, “Today is tomorrow’s memory,” and I tried to keep that in mind as they grew up and we all have good memories of those years.  Today there is an abundance of “I love you’s” in our family.  After a phone conversation and before my child hangs up I hear “I love you, Mom,” it’s the most precious sound in the world to me.

It makes life special.

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