"See Ya"

It's been almost two full months since my last post and that long since I kissed my mother good bye. Since then I haven't had the strength, emotionally and sometimes even physically, to sit down and homeschool Vada in a structured way, let alone blog about it or anything else for that matter!

I have however had some emails asking what happened to us and if we were on vacation, we were not but I am happy to say that I am finally feeling excited about teaching again! I am even more excited to say that we have already begun to "row" our first book (more on that to come within the next week!) For those of you who follow me on Facebook you may already know of my mothers tragic death. There is not a lot I can say about it. There is still a lot of unresolved legal issues with the girl who killed her. For those of you who are unaware of what happened, my mother was killed by an underage drunk driver, while she (my mother) was actually pulled onto the side of the road and seeking refuge from a storm. 

I probably won't post again about her or the legal issues around her death because it is just too much. However, something inside me felt like I had to mention my mother here before I began blogging again. 

This picture below is of the last time I saw my mom alive. It was in October of last year (2012), during our local Down syndrome awareness walk for GiGi's Playhouse. It was her first time coming to any of the walks, her first time meeting my in-laws and even meeting my husband (she wasn't in a good place when we Justin and I got married, so she didn't attend our wedding.) 

I had to identify my mothers body after the accident. I have never had to do anything like this before. Never. I knew it was my mom before I even saw her face, I saw her wrist and saw that she was wearing Vada's personalized Down syndrome "buddy band bracelet". My mom had died wearing Vada's bracelet. Just thinking about it takes my breath away and that is the image I constantly see when I think of my mom. However, this picture below is how I want to remember. With a smile on her face, proud and signing "I love you". Signing "I love you" was something that her and I did for as long as I can remember and now something that my whole family does with each other. So whenever I am thinking of my mom and my mind reverts to her lying there on that cold steal bed (as morbid as I know that probably sounds), I try to imagine this picture and her signing "I love you" and saying "See ya", because never once in my life would my mother say the words "good bye" to me and I do believe now that we have not said good bye to each other but just another "see ya".