Remembrance; talking about pain

Today's the day I now hold dearest, a day to pause & ponder, a day to remember to give thanks whilst mourning what's gone. Happy Birthday Mum, today should have been your 71st.

At first after she was gone I used to take myself away into the mountains and climb something hard enough to turn my focus from the horrors of before to a momentary reality of risk, a physical way to avoid emotional pain, to quiet an angry soul. Later, as old injuries caught up with me I'd still head high believing that some days, many a day, I deserved to hurt. 
But.
If I asked any of you what the worst pain you've ever experienced is it would be a kaleidoscope of emotional variance - one person's pain but another's hinderance, maybe even someone else's delicious glee. Childbirth? That rupture appendix? or maybe just a tattoo? If you'd asked a me from before that fateful January day then I'd have said unequivocally it was the sensation of feeling my heels drive through my ankle bones, tendons tearing, fibulas and tibias shattering, metatarsals a mess. I'd have thought that laying broken in a Sheffield Hospital being told they might amputate my foot would be as bad as any pain could ever be.
But.
It's not.
Of course it's not.

The pain of a loved one, the loss of a loved one taken before their time, taken in a way you'll never fully understand and always blame yourself for, it makes broken bones and torn flesh seem a paltry shallow thing.
And yet.
I've an odd relationship with pain now.
I'm not a masochist & I wish my ankle didn't hurt, wish it hadn't forced me to give up on so many dreams...and then I pause.
Because.
It's a choice, life's greatest gift, one my mother had stolen from her, one all those gone to the beyond no longer have. I pause & give thanks for choices I've yet to make. I could choose to not walk in the hills, not find the rocky way upwards and all too probably my physical pain would be less, but then, so might I. When pain now flares along my nerves I try to look up and out, not in and down, I try to see all the parts of my world my mother now can't - it makes that world a brighter place, it makes the pain somehow less.
 I could try not to remember my mothers passing, but then we wouldn't talk as often, I might well still be lost in the dark trying to make sense of the unfathomable, less than she'd ever of wanted me to be. Today I sat a while at the Lonely Larch, had a few tears, laughed at myself, congratulated myself for making it through another year. Missy yapped and bounced trying to get me to throw her stick. Mum would have loved her enthusiasm for life, would want me to learn a lesson from it. I threw the stick & we wandered home - smiling all the way.