A short look back

Mom's antique cookie cutters

Almost exactly three years ago I was struck with the idea to write a blog detailing my experiences and perspectives as the daughter of a terminal cancer patient.  Publishing my thoughts online made them public, and reminded me each time I wrote, of the millions of others in similar circumstances.  It became a way for me to explain my inward turmoil to the world in a coherent way, thereby giving a sort of meaning and structure to some of the most chaotic and random-seeming experiences of my life.  Knowing that I had an audience helped to keep me from feeling sorry for myself, and made me pause to consider how others might be dealing with the same kinds of situations.

Over the course of the last three years, much has changed, in both my life and in this blog.  My readership widened slightly–eventually to include my mother and close family.  I have learned valuable lessons about humility and perspective, assumptions, and the lenses through which will all view our experiences.  I have explored a range of emotions, from anger and grief and joy, to loss and resilience.   This blog, and the process of writing it, has also helped me to better understand myself.

We are about three months away from the two year anniversary of my mother’s death, and less than a week away from what would have been my parents’ 28th wedding anniversary.  My dad has sold my childhood home, and moved towns.  He’s gotten remarried, and I have been reminding myself to buy Christmas ornaments for both my siblings and step-siblings this year.  Life trundles on.

There is much I have to say about my thoughts and emotions this holiday season.  While I have by-and-large been quite content and happy these past several months, there is nothing quite like the Christmas season to bring back nostalgia and the memories of seasons–and people–past.  I can almost feel the pine sap on my hands, and smell the crisp ceder-tinged air, and see the bobbing pom-pom on my mother’s knit hat as we clamored up and down hills to find the perfect Christmas tree.  I can see the smudged and dog-eared recipe cards scattered on the counter, the kitchen surfaces dusted with flour and cinnamon.  A Kenny G Christmas CD is playing on the stereo, and my mom is pulling golden-colored sugar cookies from the oven, brushing her hair out of her eyes, and bumping the door shut with a slim hip.  I can see her everywhere–running in from the cold laden with shopping bags, sitting on the floor of our living room curling red ribbons on a gift-wrapped package with one blade of a pair of scissors.  She is filling the tree–inside and out–with nearly 3 decades of Christmas ornaments.  She is presenting our neurotic beagle with a new rawhide bone, or making treat bags for her first graders in the shape of Frosty the Snowman, and directing me to brush the white cheeks of each one with her own Cover Girl blush.

From here in Atlanta it is easy to pretend that my mom is at home grading the semester’s final spelling tests, and rushing to finish up the last minute gift-buying, or preparing our late-night Christmas Eve dinner we share every year with friends.  A part of me still expects that she will be sitting with a candle at the end of our pew at the Christmas Eve church service, the glow of the flame glinting off of her glasses as she softly sings Silent Night with the congregation.  I want so badly to see her smiling, a mug of coffee in her hands, curled up in her robe in the corner of our front room couch on Christmas morning, as eager to see our excited faces as we are to see our gifts.  I want to wrap all the presents she bought because she doesn’t have time, and help her bake homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast, or run to Wal-Mart for the 30th time because she forgot yet another crucial ingredient.

I am reduced to tears and stunned silences when I am confronted by the reality, however: A text message picture of the beautiful flower arrangement made to adorn my mother’s headstone, bursting with poinsettias.  Nearly two years later, and I can barely accept, much less stomach, the facts.  I will be visiting a cemetery plot this Christmas, in a town that is no longer home.  I will tell her how beautiful the flowers are, how many Christmas cookies dad’s eaten, about the size and shape of our tree, the gifts we’ve bought, the parties we’ve attended.  And she will be unbearably silent.