the day we laid in the backyard on blankets

i keep going back to the days immediately following my moms death and funeral. i talked to my friend joe the other night, really he is my second brother. he has been there since the beginning. and he was like a son to my mom. he flew in from colorado when she died, as did a few other close friends. i have a few memories from that time.
her funeral was april 15th.
i remember joe talking at the funeral. i remember his pin-stripe suit. i remember feeling that he spoke to who she truly was.
i remember being enormously pregnant, standing in the middle of a circle of people trying to get to me to express their condolences. and as i stood there i felt that i was there to comfort them. that i was the strong one. that i represented my mom, and that she was holding me up. i was in a state of shock and disbelief.
and in some way when i walked into that room that day and saw a set up for a funeral, with an enlarged picture of my mom at the head of rows of chairs, it was as though i had already seen it, and in another way it was as though i was living someone else life. how does one explain this paradox? this paradox that is my life all of the time now, that has me feeling like i am living in a dream.
i remember walking into the building, holding steven's hand. dakota was there. of course. there were so many people there. i was so shut down. i believe it was that day that my emotional body went to sleep, in an effort to rally for the ensuing birth of my daughter.
but what stands out to me most is the day we all laid in the backyard on blankets. and it was like we had stepped back in time. time was suspended mid-air. my mom was just out of town, and we had all woken up late from the raging party we had thrown the night before. ta, joseph, laura, hannah, ryan, sara, and steven... we laid barefoot in the sun and soaked it up, like you do on a spring day when you have been long craving its warmth. and i could almost convince myself that she would be home any minute. and i knew that every one there would truly miss her deeply.
she was their dear friend too. she was their mother. she was the mother we all wished we had.
and i did have her. she was mine. i had her in the way that only children have their mothers. in the way that piper will always have me.
i had her, and she was the best. the greatest. and everyone that knows her knows that this is no exaggeration.
and when she was dying i felt that it was the cruelest thing that could happen on the planet, for me to have had her, my soul mate, the best mother on the planet, only to have her taken away from me. and what i feel today, as i sit here with the deepest sadness, is that i was the lucky one. the luckiest one. i am grateful to have ever known her.
and what i would give to go back to that day. to lay on that blanket with my best friends, bare-foot, basking in the sun, knowing that she was just out of town, that she would be back any minute, and that she would make us dinner,
and we would kiss her face.