This Christmas...

My Dad passed away in January of 1990 after a long battle with cancer; we knew –so, I think, did he - that Christmas 1989 would be his last. Despite our best efforts, it was a dreary one. Christmas last year was fine – we had no inkling at all that Mom would not be with us for the holidays this year.

I always thought I’d have some warning that her time on earth was drawing to a close – an illness, some loss of faculties – but the God she so faithfully believed in took her mercifully between one breath and the next, without suffering, on a lovely Sunday evening last April, shortly after she enjoyed a serving of her favorite seasonal dessert, strawberry short cake. What a way to go.

The front door of Mom’s cottage is barely five feet from my own back door; the proximity that we enjoyed over the years now keeps her memory as fresh as if she were still sitting in the living room in her big easy chair watching FOX news, or curled cozily in her bed listening to late night radio. It seems like I still ought to be able to slip next door and kiss her good night, and it hurts all over again when I realize those sweet moments are gone forever.

Author Susan Howatch wrote one of my favorite quotes about grief in her epic novel The Wheel of Fortune:

“There is no timetable for grief. Grief isn’t a train you catch at the station. Grief has its own time, and grief’s time is beyond time…time is a circle… one day you’ll look across the circle, and hear her echo in time. “

And yes, as the year passes, I am indeed hearing my mother’s echo in time.
Faced with a surfeit of tomatoes from the summer garden, I remembered a little plastic kitchen gadget Mom had bought from a television advertisement - a simple hinged chopping device with interchangeable blades. At the time I’d teased her about buying “TV junk” and she gave me her “wait and see” look, peeking over the tops of her glasses with raised eyebrows and a grin. In desperation I pondered the piles of tomatoes and decided I’d give it a try – and now dozens of bags of neatly diced Romas sit in our freezer waiting for some good Italian winter cooking projects. As we were chopping away I looked heavenward and said “ OK, you were right. Thanks, Mom.”

The week before my birthday, the old, tattered Chex Party Mix recipe that I thought I’d lost fell out from between two cook books. This is the real deal, that first made its appearance back in the 1950’s, and is not for the faint-hearted. It is redolent with garlic and reminds me of my parents’ holiday parties when, as a kid, I’d eat it till my lips shriveled up from the salt. Yum. Mom always made several batches of this treat starting around my November birthday, and took care to include a big bag of it in my finals-week care packages when I was a college student. As the recipe fluttered down onto the counter I shook my head – she hadn’t let me down. Thanks, Mom.

Most recently, after a long healthy spell, an evil respiratory crud attempted to do me in. I am not a person who does “sick” well, and the day had finally come when I could no longer look to Mom for a serving of warm milk toast and sympathy. I woke up hot and pitiful and slouched dejectedly around the house, trailed by the dragging tail of my bathrobe and several worried dogs. Worst of all, when I could no longer postpone the moments of contact between my fevered bum and the icy toilet seat – why is it always colder when you’re sick, anyway? - the temperature differential resulted in a shock that shot up my spine without stopping till it reached the neighborhood of my ears. I perched miserably and prayed for a respite.

At that point an image appeared in my brain: a fluffy knit item that had arrived in the mail last year, another purchase that I’d teased Mom about. I tottered over to the now-quiet cottage. Sure enough – there it was in all its pink splendor, laundered and waiting – Mom’s toilet seat cover. It may not have been exactly the comforting touch of her hand on my cheek…but then again, maybe it was.

This Christmas, Mom will have a ringside seat at the celebrations in Heaven; as for me and mine, we’ll have tomatoes for the spaghetti sauce on Christmas Eve, Chex Party Mix – the real deal –to munch on, and maybe not a ringside seat exactly – but a comfy warm pink one, anyway. Thanks, Mom.