Only memories remain.

My mom moved out of the trailer I grew up in and into an elderly "community". It's an apartment building for low income elderly and handicapped. Her sister lives in the same building which will make their Skip-Bo and Yahtzee playing all the more accessible.

It is a good thing for her. Rising fuel costs make it next to impossible for her to live off her social security and disability. Plus she won't be alone all the time. I'm grateful that her life will have more in it. Even if I'm not part of that physically.

I miss her so much sometimes. I don't talk about it or let myself go there because it causes me a lot of sadness. It's different when you're raised by your grandmother. I miss the mother she is, I miss the mother I wanted her to be and I miss the mother I need in my life right now. She's a good person and a good mother given her up-bringing and her own relationship with her mother. Tough, strong women. Life experiences have added to that shell. The softness and understanding that I needed as a child and the friend I need as a woman are there but our age differences have kept me from experiencing it firsthand. At least not in the way I would have chosen. But we don't get to choose. We just get to love.

This is the next step in her life. It's her right to move on and let age take it's course. But it hurts a little to see the changes. It sucks to be so far away. I'm not able to identify a new home with her or find where I fit in. It's unnatural to watch your mother slip away from old age when you're just barely coming into your own.

Eventually I will accept that my kids will not go to grandma's house for Thanksgiving or help her make donuts at the kitchen table. They won't spend the night or eat one of her popcorn balls. All that's left of that home are memories. I'll just have to share those instead.