Beatrice Verhoeven

It’s been 3 years without my mom. 3 years since I went to bed with a mom and woke up without one. 3 years since I spoke to her, 3 years since I heard her “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” And so much has happened that I would want to share with her: all the joys, the lows, the griefs, the laughs. How Theo plays with the train set she kept from when I was a little girl. How Ella looks like her when she’s not amused and secretly judging us. How Theo still looks at her picture or my urn necklace and says “Grandma Irene.” But then there’s the fact that Ella will never have known her at all, when all my mom wanted was to be a grandma, that breaks my heart.

It feels like forever since she’s been gone, but also like it’s been a day. I will never not miss her and wish things were different and that I’d handled things differently. But we think about her and talk about her all the time, and I know she’s always there watching over us. Love you Mom, I wish you were here.