Third Anniversary

I was cleaning through some things recently and stumbled across two sheets from a yellow legal pad, folded into eighths.  When I opened it, I found that it was the eulogy I gave at my mother's funeral.  I know I did it -- I wrote about doing it at the time -- but I don't really remember it.  It's like my memory of breaking my arm in the 8th grade and getting it set -- I know it happened, I have some recollection of it, but it's oddly distant and seems like it's something I watched happen to somebody else, rather than something that I participated in.  An out of body experience, of sorts.

This is part of what I said, or at least what I wrote to say:

My mother was my best friend.  She was a good friend.  She was patient and loving and wise and understanding -- most of the time, anyway.  Sometimes she was still my mom.

Not too long after I moved away, I bought a car.  She yelled at me, via cell phone, while I was in the dealership signing the papers.  "You're just a little girl, you can't buy a car by yourself.  Why couldn't you wait for me to get there?"

Even from a thousand miles away, she hated that I went shopping without her.  And she still wanted to negotiate me a better price.

There's more there, about my mother's laugh and her sense of humor, and how much she loved being with her family and friends.  But it's not a true reflection of what I felt then or what I still feel now when I think about it:  The speech was edited and sanitized and shortened into sound bytes that I, somewhat wishfully, believed I could get out without crying.  It's the notebook that is the real record of my feelings, then and, along with the postscript, now.  Only, now, on the third anniversary, those feelings exist in smaller, more manageable, less heart-wrenching doses.

I still miss my mother.  I can't believe it's been three years.  It alternately feels like yesterday and a lifetime ago.