A round of duck, duck, goose. A race across the field. Ten times down the slide.
Flower Girls
Pa
May 8
Every year, as we've done for the past three years, my sisters and I come together on May eight to remember a woman we loved more than life and hated more than death.
Some people would call our gathering a tradition. A day we have set aside to honor our mother. We call it an awakening.
May eight is more than a memorial day for my sisters and I. It is a day of freedom. A day my sisters and I use to remind ourselves that our mother's hold cannot transcend death. That in death, our mother no longer holds any influential powers over our lives.
This isn't to say that my sisters and I don't love our mother. We loved her with a dedication that could not be broken in life. She was more than mom. She was our best friend, confidant, and counsel. She was anything we needed.
She was also our greatest enemy. Alive, she was our weakness, the one hold we could not break from, the conscience we did not always want, the roadblock we could not move.
So on this day of her birth my sisters and I come together to celebrate something we could not while our mother was alive: our independence from her.
Getting together on mom's birthday was my idea. As the oldest, I felt my sisters and I should do something since our mother's sudden death left us feeling cheated. It was as if fate robbed us of any opportunity we might have to sever the control she had over our lives. Soon after her passing my sisters and I found that she was still very much a part of our lives.
Thus, May eight was created.
On this day, my sisters and I come together to eat, drink, and share the things we've done. Things we never would have done had our mother still be alive. Secret things. Shameful things. Selfish things.
