I wrote this post more than six weeks ago, submitted it to The Mudroom, and forgot all about it.

The irony is not lost on me–it’s a post about my love/hate relationship with remembering.

Then I got an email a couple weeks ago from The Mudroom editor, telling me they’d approved my post and scheduled it for today, September 22nd — which happens to be the fifth anniversary of my mom’s death.

Again, the irony is not lost — the following post was largely written around the remembering of my mom and her absence.

But God has His ways, so I’m trusting that there’s a reason these words are showing up here, in this place, on this red-letter day — for such a time as this.

***

“This is the worst day ever!” my nine-year-old son claimed.

Since nothing of consequence had actually happened that day, I countered, “Oh, there have been far worse days.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“Like the day Grandma died.”

“I don’t really remember that day. I was only four years old,” he replied.

I would’ve been okay if he’d left it at that. Maybe even viewed it as a mercy that he didn’t remember the awful day my mom died in Michigan while we were living in South Africa.

But he didn’t stop there.

“I don’t really remember Grandma, either.”

I instinctively clutched my stomach, as if I could hold in the pain.

The tears came fast, stinging as I sped to the bathroom and closed the door. I turned the shower on cold and stepped into the tub, wishing the shower curtain could separate me from the bite of his honesty. I wiped a cold cloth over hot tears and let the water wash my sobs down the drain.

My fears were coming true. We were forgetting her.

[Tweet “My fears were coming true. We were forgetting her.”]

Read the rest of the story over at The Mudroom.