Poof Without The Smoke

My mother would have been 78 today. I don't feel the pangs any more, just thought it was worth saying one last time.

Once or twice, especially the first year, I felt like she actually visited me, which I wrote about in "The Embrace." The quality of the experience was different from a dream, as I also had dreams to compare with her visitations. As you know, dreams are real while you're having them. A "visit" was so much more, like really pumping up the volume.

Then, one day a month or so ago, I woke up certain there would be no more visits, like she finally went wherever she was supposed to go. The finality was very simple: "Poof" without the smoke.

I still have my little keepsake box by the bed. It was a joke and not a joke - I purchased a ceramic box with two fishes painted on it ("Pisces") as a gift for her, and actually told her I liked it a lot and wanted to inherit it. Looks like I did! In fact, I have at least one more thing like that. Here are the things I keep in the box . . . her ID from her condo association, a few pieces of jewelry, a coin from every country she visited, and one of her loud hair scrunchies. Sometimes, I think it's time to pack it away, but I like opening it now and then. When I do, I feel like a kid and for some unfathomable reason, every time I open it, I am surprised as though I am discovering the contents. That's certainly strange, but not at all unpleasant.

Maybe it is a kid thing that's key here . . . you know . . . your mother tells you to guess what's in her hand, and it turns out to be something you've seen before except that, being your mom, she's rearranged one of the atoms and you're standing there wondering what she did to it.

Or maybe it's just me, and maybe that was her plan all along.