Another Un-Mother's Day...some hope

Another Mother's Day came and went. Without a word from my kids. I've come to dread Mother's Day. Just like I dread every holiday now. Including my children's birthdays. Because I know I will feel sad, I will be depressed. I will feel even more empty inside. The emptiness will seem as deep and ravaging as though someone I loved dearly had just died. And that is how I felt every day at first. Now it has lessened. These days there may be few hours that pass when I don't think about my kids. But still my children are always there..on my mind...an aching in my heart. And I'M SICK of hearing myself talk about this subject. Yes, I don't have my kids. I haven't seen them in five years. Now my sons are 19 and 21. Poor me, poor me. I am the broken record player, the needle stuck in the same groove...on and on...nothing changes...I am on repeat, over and over. I haven't wanted to write on this blog for a while because nearly every time I do, I cry. I hate to think about the situation. I feel the absence of the missed years with my kids. I am stuck in 2007. My children are still 11, 14 and 16 to me. And I still feel as though I am bound and caged, powerless to help them. I can see them from my jail cell, and I stick my hands through the bars but I cannot reach them. I watch them being hurt and abused and I struggle against the bars but I am powerless to help them. I have been crippled from doing my job as their mother. I now know I will live no matter how much pain this has caused me or continues to cause me. I guess that is the hope. And I can convey that to others. I spoke with a grandmother the other day. Her daughter is in a similar situation to mine. Her daughter's ex-husband sounds very similar to mine. The grandmother misses her grandson terribly, worries about him. He is ten, almost eleven. (The age my daughter was when I saw her last.) It has been eight months since she's seen her grandson. Part of me wanted to say, "Eight months?! That's nothing! Try five years!" Of course, I didn't. I told her she wasn't alone. I told her I felt for her pain. I wanted to tell her to have hope that she'll see him again...but I didn't. I don't know if she will. When at first I didn't see my kids for a few weeks it was agonizing. I kept praying, any day now, I'll see them. I'll talk to them. It didn't happen. Weeks became months. Months became a year. A year became five years. And I know for a teenager, five years is a lifetime. So the only hope I could give her was the small hope I have. That the pain will lessen with time.