“It’s so curious: one can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer… and everything collapses.” –Colette
I’m going to talk about what I want to right now. Look at this picture of an aardvark if you want to walk away because I’m going to talk about death, loss and the holidays.
There is navel gazing in blogging. So I get my turn today because I can.
I miss my mom.
She died 11-years ago and I damn well miss her. It’s the holidays and this is always a messy time for me. I found myself profoundly sad last night about Thanksgiving and the entire Christmas season. Now, no worries, this happens for a lot of people and I believe it’s best to talk/write about it. I think significant events like the holidays bring up certain memories for people who have suffered a loss. Although time heals many things, there are reminders and triggers that bring up that loss, that invisible, gaping hole which nothing can fill.
My mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer one week before Christmas in 1996. We knew something was wrong before we “conned” her into going to the doctor because she hated doctors horribly. By the time we got her there, the tests were pretty conclusive and the doctor told me in the hallway that it was bad.
She lived for 14 more months after that and every day we watched her slowly fade away. The worst part is that she knew she was fading away as well and that is something I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to experience or to see. It’s a little bit like hell on earth watching someone die a little piece at a time.
Fast forward 11 years to now. Traditions have changed in my family. My dad remarried, my sister has two daughters who are enmeshed in their own lives which are filled with school, sports and friends where the holidays send her to visit her husband’s folks away from Hoots and my extended family, although large, never really spent holiday times together. So the smells and tastes of Thanksgiving have changed and I’ve been fortunate enough to have a place to hang my hat on Turkey Day. I do, however, get nostalgic and sentimental though, missing those years of family bonding.
Her turkey and dressing, experimenting with different foods, the fact that my dad doesn’t really like turkey (he’s having Japanese this year for his Thanksgiving dinner which I think is fabulous) or how that we would literally starve on the Wednesday before the big day because my mother always forgot to get any additional things to eat (this was a running joke in my family.)
The year her dog, Girl, ate our dinner. The time we had a huge cactus as a Christmas tree and put little red balls on it to celebrate. The year she planted a Christmas tree in the yard and named it Rufus (I get my weirdness honestly). Staff Christmas dinners at my dad’s old company where we would all dress us and have a great time. My mother laughing at me when I would make dressing sandwiches (carbariffic). How she always burned the rolls (every, single Thanksgiving and Christmas.) How my father wanted (and still does) to go to Wal-Mart if it’s a holiday. The movies we went to on Thanksgiving. How my mother never really recovered from her own mother’s death from breast cancer and where she felt these same things during Christmas, which my grandmother loved more than anything. How she could never smell Chanel No 5 without seeing the bottle that my grandfather gave my grandmother every year without crying. I feel the same way when I smell a hint of Youth Dew, which only my mother could wear successfully (it makes me sneeze when other people wear it these days.)
How she wasn’t afraid to give us a hug and tell us we were her everything. And, you know, she meant it.
I remember the joyful things. And I miss them. I have made new traditions but I still become a nostalgic ball of mush thinking about my mother.
