Easter Saturday

My mom loved Easter. It was always a time to gather family and celebrate the new life of spring in the Dakotas. We usually had an egg hunt before she needed to go sing at church, and the granddaughters usually managed to talk her into giving them their Easter baskets early as well. She would have been humming her part from “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” for several days, so we could all sing it with her. After church, we would have had a proper egg bake with a ham and fresh fruit in true Midwestern tradition. 

So this year without her seems unbearable. It’s not lost on me how Holy Week dances with pain and suffering prior to the story of the Resurrection, but I’m struggling to put into words exactly how all of that makes me feel at this most holy time. I keep thinking today about the utter anguish and despair that Mary surely felt at Golgotha, her beloved son cradled in her lap. A Mother’s love. The day before He rose was surely filled with unimaginable grief.

That is what I feel this year as we prepare to celebrate Easter. This is a first…and I know the firsts are just very difficult. I miss her in ways I can explain and many ways that I can’t put into words. She always had Cadbury eggs and black jellybeans for the big kids <me> and a ridiculous plan for spoiling the wee ones with fuzzy bunnies and too much sugar. There would be tulips and hyacinth and lots of discussion about the YHS musical which opened soon,  She loved to make cupcakes with little coconut nests for jellybird eggs, and a perfect Easter cake decorated with homemade cream cheese frosting. Cookie decorating, namecards for the Easter table…we never marked a holiday without some Celia fanfare, and Easter was one of her favorites for doing it big. 

So as we celebrate the good news of Easter tomorrow, a big part of my heart will have Easter Saturday feelings. Deep grief. Missing my mom. Nothing changes or takes away the ache of just wanting to talk to her or hug her, or watch her with Jonah and the girls. She was such a huge presence in our lives, and we will always miss her on these family occasions that she loved so much. We were everything to her. I always knew it, but I never stopped to savor what it meant to love and be loved so beautifully and completely by her. What I wouldn’t give to frost all those cupcakes and clean up the egg dye mess with her just one more time. <Love’s redeeming work is done…Allelujah>

**The photo is outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin on an Easter trip to visit Emelia.