Being the "Matriarch"

As I consider the ebb and flow of my life, I watch some tides roll in and others roll out. My mother's mother's extended family participate in a family newsletter twice a year. I was pulled down the rabbit hole and started contributing a number of years ago because my grandmother was queen of the guilt.
She has been gone for more than 3 years now and I still feel some connection to my second and third cousin and sometimes the genealogy is just to convoluted to make the family connection. Just suffice it to say that I share news of my family with people in most states of the U.S. as well as some other continents. Somewhere along the line we share a common ancestor.

This is a picture taken of my mother and my youngest daughter on the day of my middle daughter's wedding. Mom has been gone for more than a year now. Not a week goes by that one of my daughter's doesn't mention how much they miss their grandmother. I miss her too. With her passing she left a vacancy in our family. She was the matriarch, our go-to person with all the wisdom, experience and answers. She anchored the family traditions and gave me a sense of permanence. If I could just talk it over with mom we could find the answer. My response from her cousin to the most recent family newsletter made me realize that I should be the anchor now. Her brothers and sisters aren't quite sure what to do with me now that she is gone. I'm an adult child that is now motherless and they make attempts to somehow plug that hole but my relationship with my mother was forged in the fires of experience. Some good, some not so good but all of them contributed to the relationship we had. It feels funny to realize that she has now passed the baton to me and I must be the one that has the wisdom, experience and answers and the future of family traditions is under my direction. I wonder if my mom really had all the answers or if she was faking them the way I'm sure I will have to. Fortunately, I have smart, strong-willed, independent daughters that are pretty good at finding the answers they need. And even more fortunate for me is that they still include me.