Heart Patch

Remembering with love, patching the heart, one memory at a time.

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Autumn leaves

It’s been over three years now since my mother crossed the rainbow bridge. I feel her so close yet so far away.

As the seasons come and go I reach into my memory bag for anything I can recall of my mamita. I love nature and weather, and just being able to connect them to her makes me feel as if every season, tree, leaf, flower, and holiday will serve as living monument to the love that she shared with me.

For the last couple of days I’ve seen a few leaves begin to fall from a tree outside of my office window. It sends me right back to staring out of the window of my childhood bedroom as I watched tall slender oaks drop leaves in different shades of oranges and browns onto the ground. I can still hear my mom in her adorable Colombian accent, asking us to get ready to go outside on an “advenshure.”

She would take us out to collect leaves,sticks, and acorns and look for creatures big, small, and mythical. I remember the smell of crisp air and the scent the trees gave off with this change. It was sometimes spicy, earthy, and always warm.

We would take our collection of forest parts and find a family of rocks to build a village in. I would imagine little fairies coming to visit and ensured they would have tiny acorn bowls to sip fairy water from.

The afternoons were filled with our stories and laughter, and the walk back into our home with the crunching of freshly fallen leaves beneath our footsteps will always echo in my heart. - Eboni Jewell

Thank you mamita hermosa. Thank you.

Happy Autumn ❤️

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Little Treats

Today I randomly craved a little coffee and caramel flavored candy. I remembered my Mom bringing bags of them back when we would return from her native city of Medellin, Colombia. The sound of the wrapper, the smell of coffee, milk, caramel, and the feeling of comfort it brought was always a happy time. I honestly never liked coffee, the caffeine made me feel sick, and I wasn't a fan of the bitterness. It also may have been the fact that my Mother had given me me a small toy tea cup's worth of it when I was 5, but I would never forget that first sip. The delicious aroma and the horrible taste. She just giggled at me in her white silk pajamas and then asked if I wanted some milk in it. "Is that what you do mamá?" She nodded and poured some whole milk in. I tasted it and still crinkled my face together.  She then grabbed a little bowl filled with crystal white sand and made her way back over while making sure not to trip over my ninja turtle slippers. "How about some azucar?" My eyes lit up, but I had one other request. "More milk please mamá and then the sugar." She shook her head with a smile. "But then you won't be drinking café!" She said in a mockingly snobby tone. I carefully held my little cup to her and smiled. She rolled her eyes and sprinkled in some extra milk and then the sugar. "This will have to be a rare treat." And that it definitely was, a rare and beautiful treat. As were many moments with my Mother, the ones I choose to relive at least. There were hard ones too, but I focus on retaining the lessons there, no reason to rehash the pain. Every good memory additionally serves the great purpose of patching the gap in her physical absence. So  today I searched on Google for the name of the candy and it popped up pretty quickly. I then easily slipped over to Amazon to order them. I'm really looking forward to these Coffee Delights, I hope they still taste as good, but at least I know the memory of it does.  

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When I was a kid my mom used take me for walks in the woods behind our house. On these walks she was always clearing a trail and looking for any dry or dead trees to move aside. One time there was, what looked like a rather large tree to five year old me, leaning on the path. She moved me safely back and then began analyzing the tree. After a few kicks on different sides she found the safest spot and firmly planted her foot against it. With a thrust of her leg she yelled out "I am WONDER WOMAN!" The tree dropped right over with a snap and a thud. I watched as she began to roll the log away leaving me in glorious awe of the fact that she was my mother. As I grew older she displayed further feats with her strength, but I began to learn it wasn't really the physical strength that she showed but the spiritual strength that awed me then.  She was always the Wonder Woman to my Sailor Moon. I drew this at the one year anniversary of her passing. It expressed the pain but also the embrace of her love and strength that I still felt through it all.

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She Sparks

She called me her spark of love

through her I entered this world

strangest gate I’ve ever seen

except for planet 33

but i digress, that’s another blog

29 years we got to spend

dancing and singing 

hugging and laughing

crying and screaming 

sleeping and dreaming 

near and far

scattered yet shining like stars

on snow days, when the pipes were frozen she would cook eggs in the fire place

she’d bundle up even though she didn’t like the snow

and go

to teach us to play to make every day a good one

or the best we could She tried so hard to reach me

beseech me that there was a home

the night before the day she passed

she called me through my tears

and promised I would never be alone

she would always be by my side

even though her spark is not moving

inside the mecha she once thrilled

and drove like a race car down a hill

it’s here, in me, 

the spark she sparked for all to see.

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She lives in the heart and the memories she sparks!

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Good memories

So Mother’s day is coming up this weekend, and my mother left the planet about 14 months ago. I say months instead of a year because it relays the feeling better to me. Each month, day and hour has been a lap I’ve been swimming through, across a sea with no shore in sight. Not yet at least. I’ve heard it takes years and it’s something I’ll never stop feeling, but it can become something I will learn to cope with better and better each day. Here is to a coping trial. I will share my random, best, and honest memories I have of my mamita, in hopes that over the rainbow won’t seem so far away.