Why Don't I Cry?

I am confused about my emotions.

My mother just passed from this reality, a woman who raised me and who I knew for all of my 56 years on this world.  A woman I loved and who I worried about.  She was 83 years old.  She was the great grandmother of my granddaughter.  I had been an usher when she remarried after Dad died, and I had seen her happiness and was happy for her.  She was with me at my daughter’s college graduation, substituting in part for my wife, who was at my other daughter’s graduation. She gave me council when I asked for it, which was not often.  She gave me love always and prayed for me when I was sent to Kuwait.

I am sad and I do feel a loss.  I will not be able to pop in and see her any more, even though I only did that once or twice a year for the last twenty or so.  I will miss our talks on the phone, more frequent than the trips, but not too frequent.  Living 500 miles away, I feel guilty not having been there more often as she got older, and yet that seems to be the way of life these days in society.  Always there were reasons, always there were excuses.  Mostly there were reasons.

The family had known she had only months to live, and while she had declined chemo, she was not in pain.  I think she knew what was coming and when I talked to her it was discussed in pleasant enough terms.  Maybe she was being brave for me, but at my age I don’t think that was all of it.  I think she was concerned but ready for the next step.  When the phone call came, much of me had anticipated the news.

She had outlived two husbands, both who had died of cancer.  She had her friends, but in her last years her age had caught up to her and her friends.  They were no longer mobile.  Some were no longer with us.  I think in the end she might have been lonely, as a lack of mobility and an aging of the body might put your mind there.  This I am not sure of, but think it probably was so. 

I believe in life eternal.  Part of me is actually joyful that she is going on to the next step of her journey.  This might be my reason for a lack of tears?  We are one in the great eternal, all part of a loving God.  My heart tells me that I will see her again, when I have completed my own journey, however many lifetimes it takes.

This mixture of happiness and sadness is strange to me.  I have tremors of emotions which suddenly swell up, much like at the movies, but I have not cried.  Aren’t we suppose to cry?

My children all called today, and my daughters were crying.  My older brother and two sisters also called, and I could hear the emotion in their voices as we talked through the details of what was to follow.  I seem to be the calmest of all of us.  Does this mean that they loved her more?  I don’t think this is the case, so why am I so calm?