Seven months after my mother passed away my father, my sister, my brother-in-law and the pastor of my parents’ church gave proper rest to my mother’s remains in the place that will hold her ashes until the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and at which time God will resurrect us in body and soul to join him in paradise. This was almost 7 months to the date. Although I was not there for her passing, her funeral or her burial I know that the small ceremony of final farewell was full of emotion, just like it had been at the time of her home going.
Although it has been, as I mentioned earlier, seven months since her death I still feel at times as if she has never left. I think that she is still at the hospital. Many times when I talk with my father over the computer, and he walks away from the camera I feel as if I can see her walking down the hallway, coming out of the kitchen or the bathroom.  At times although I cannot see her I feel her presence, her warmth, her love, always giving me strength and reassurance. I think about her every day, and many times that is all that I think about. I see her in my mind laying on the hospital bed.
My mother was a pessimist but she had love, and she would always find a way of sharing it.
My father, during my childhood was not a loving father, as he had come from a home where love was not present, but my mother would make him feel loved, and I think that is what he can take with him for the rest of his days. For those of us who were fortunate enough to have shared part of her path on this world we can also take her love with us.
My mother fully understood the meaning of the words of the Apostle Paul in the 1^st letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13 as she had lived it through my grandparents and their love to each other:

13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The past few months have not been easy for me, I cannot say that I am still mourning, even though that is what my therapist calls it, but what I feel is that her passing has knocked me off my rails, it’s like I have lost my path, I feel many times like a ship without a helm, simply going in circles without being able to move forward or with any direction.

I recently watched a movie called The Descendants in which the wife has suffered an accident that has left her brain dead. The husband is told by doctors that there is nothing they can do and that the proper thing to consider is disconnecting her. He has two daughters, and the process of saying goodbye is very painful. I am conscious that I did not go through those motions like this family does in the movie, but being at 5000 miles does not alleviate the pain, the sorrow, the loss and the vacuum of my mother’s passing.
A very good friend of mine who lost his brother when we were very young asked me if I had any regrets about being so far during the last few years of my mother’s life, not enjoying or being nearer during the last few months, and I told him that I didn’t have an answer. My parents were not happy when we moved far away, but they knew it was for the best, and that, together with the fact that we tried to see them as often as we were able to, even though towards the last few years it only meant once a year, made things a little bit easier. Many times people who are physically close does not guarantee that they are emotionally closer.  
I know that my mother is at peace, her ashes are right by the place that she was most attached during all her life, the church. Her spirit belongs to God, and to all of us who loved her, and while she is in our memory she will always be alive.
God bless you, Mum.