First Mother's Day

Yesterday was a difficult but blessed day. It turned out to be better than I expected, thank God. For the last few days I had been dreading mother’s day because of not having Jonathan David with us. We just miss him so much. I never imagined that I would be spending my first mother's day without my son... But we ended up having a nice day despite the sadness.

Jonny woke me up with breakfast in bed followed by three mother's day cards: one from Buffy (our cat! :-)), one from him and one from Jonathan David. Buffy's card made me laugh because it said something like "Happy Mother's day and I love you very much but I heard a rumor that has concerned me and I need to be reassured... am I adopted?" :-) The other two cards made me cry, they were very special. I then spoke to my dear mother in Portugal and thanked her for being so wonderful and for supporting me when I needed her most in the last year. Happy mother’s day again maezinha!

Then after watching church live online, we decided to take flowers to Jonathan David's grave. His grave marker was only just placed this last week and it was the first time that we saw it. Jonathan David's body is buried in a beautiful memorial park and the day was just glorious. After spending some time reflecting on our own, we were amazingly surprised by the arrival of our "adopted parents" Jim and Jean. They said they had been thinking about us in the morning and wanted to pay their respects to Jonathan David. God brought them to us. We were so touched to see them arrive and to remember how Jonathan David is loved by others as well. Their presence at the memorial park yesterday really comforted my heart - which is why we were able to smile in these pictures. It was also very comforting seeing so many people at the park visiting either their child's grave or their mother's. It just reminded us that we were not alone in our sadness on mother's day - many others were also grieving.

After we left the memorial park we decided to re-pot Jonathan David's tree which we got from my colleagues at work. We decided not to plant it in our garden because we may be moving in a few years and want to take it with us. The tree will stay on our front door step as a beautiful reminder of our son's life.

(Note in the picture above: Buffy behind Jonny inside the house - she participated in the tree planting as well! :-))

We also received phone calls and e-mails from friends and family yesterday and were also surprised when we arrived home after the memorial park to find a beautiful basil plant in a unique plant pot painted by Ella (Chris and Corinne’s beautiful 18 month old daughter). Thank you Ella, you are very talented :-)! We ended the day with our first "cook-out" (or barbecue, as we say in other countries :-)) and had our family friend Maria Helena over. We hadn't seen her since February and it was really nice catching up and she also helped me plant some flowers in our front yard.

I thank God that despite the sadness, my first mother’s day turned out to be a good day to remember our son and acknowledge the special relationship that I have with him as his mother. He has taught me many things and I miss him dearly…