“August… The month my mom and I took our first breath, she took her last, and an expectant mother now motherless tries to find herself again. How was I to raise a daughter without the woman who raised me? Who better to understand the love of a mother than your own. With time I have come to see that my mother is living in me; she has been here all along, and the way I love my kids is her legacy and my own. God continues to transform me into a blooming August Flower.”
As I reflected on the name for this Blog, I couldn’t help but think back and wonder how I could regroup all I have been through and simplify it into one concept. I felt a stirring in my heart to consider the month of August. Not only was I born in this month but the most significant person in my life, my mother, also shared my birth month, and it was pretty special. We never did much for our birthdays but there was always a special small gathering of celebration for a new year of life and the blessing of getting one year older and wiser.
Now, years later, August of 2005 became the most bitter sweet month of the year. To me it is the hardest month and every year as it approaches, I know I am in for an emotional ride. At the start of the year, my mother was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cervical cancer. After a surgery in June she would begin a brief series of Chemotherapy to help eliminate any lingering cancer cells in her body. The doctors said it was just for precaution.
It just so happens that her first Chemo was scheduled on my birthday and I was the one who would take her to her first appointment that would begin her health downfall. 11 days later the worst day of my life came to be. She was taken by ambulance at 2am to the local hospital where within hours I found myself saying a goodbye I was never expecting to need to say so soon. She never made it to her birthday that year; she went to her eternal resting place just a week shy of her 48th birthday.
Though August seems like a month of transitions from Summer break to the start of school, the end of Summer and the look towards the Fall, a month of hustling and rushing to get things prepared for the new school year; to me it is so much more. I am always taken back to the love of my sweet mom that is not around for my birthday, the anniversary of a day that shattered my heart and still aches in a different way, and the birthday of the woman who gave me life and so much love, who I miss every single day.
I look back 14 years later to this year and the month of August and think of the hot weather, the excessively moist land, and how hard it must be for flowers to bloom during this trying time and season. I think of my life as a flower needing to find a way to bloom during such hardship and heartache. How intricate God is in creating such beautiful flowers with different strengths that allow them to adorn our world with these precious creations all year.
Each year as I go through the month of August I am reminded of how much God has helped me bloom even though I was not sure I could. The heat of the pain that I felt was excessive but just short of being too much to handle; the torrential downpour of rain in the times of heaviness and grief; the Lord helped ease with just enough sunlight to evaporate the weight of it all. The month of August helped mold me into who I am today, it brought to life the woman who gave life to me, and it is a constant reminder of the blessings God has surrounded me with to allow me to grow and bloom in maturity, strength, faith, and virtue.
This blog, August Flower, is dedicated to the month that although heavy with moments of longing also reminds me of the transformation it has made on my spirit and on the person I am today. I also honor my angel, my mother…. She continues to live in me.
augustflower.family.blog 
