Early memories of holidays are mixed between warm pajamas with footies, excitement for presents, and excuses not to go to school.  Theoretically, now they are excuses not to work.  However, I often still sit in front of my laptop or take a call when I should be on personal time.  At some point growing up, holidays became even more about not going to school (let’s be real), but also about doing the same thing with family every year.  That repetition created a habit that turned into a tradition.  Sometimes it seems as if the repetition must be maintained or else it won’t be a successful holiday: if I don’t read Santa Mouse every year, or if I step onto the carpet area before everyone else is ready to sit for presents, we are doomed.  God forbid we switch up the Christmas morning breakfast menu.

For the record, I would never want to change the Christmas morning breakfast menu – eggs benedict every year, and only that one time a year.  It’s delicious.  Holiday traditions create both superstitions and comfort zones, and we maintain them because we like them.

Some holidays still seem like the creation of marketing or bars.  St. Patrick’s Day seems to be lost in a haze of green beer (which tastes just like regular beer), and St. Valentine’s is best when you choose between boxes of cards with perforated edges featuring cartoons with cheesy messages. T-Rex says: You’re DINO-MITE!

But at the moment, holidays suck.  They suck on the level of needing to run and find a foxhole to hide in because seeing other people could be the worst.  Dramatic? Yes. Do I like being so banal to use the word “suck?” Not really, but it’s appropriate – all potential joy is drawn away as if by a vacuum that allows no spillage or backflow.  It just… sucks.

Easter wasn’t that bad.  We were never big Easter people.  Mom would go to the Dollar Store and get random basket fillers for everyone.  Recently, she asked me to do it.  This year, we didn’t see each other at all.  But, it wasn’t a big deal.   Because we aren’t Easter people.

Here are a few email subjects from advertisements that I’ve received in the last few days. All are real; none are made up.

• “Get Ready to Make Mom’s Day”
• “MOMMMMMMMMM!!!!! MOMMMMMMMM!!!!” [In drafting this, I counted the letters and punctuation. They were uneven]
• “Make Your Mama Proud w/Home Protection….”
• “Mom called. She wants something pink, bubbly or both”

First, use the oxford comma, World Market, you’re better than that.  Second, let’s not even talk about watching tv, because it’s worse.  I recently saw a commercial about being empowered while having cancer featuring young, lithe, beautiful women who looked healthy but for a cap on their head, and I almost threw my remote into my tv.  I’m not a violent or wasteful person, but this is not an exaggeration.  Romanticizing cancer in such a way is disgusting.

Don’t get me wrong, moms deserve all the thanks and love in the world – they are heroes – and I’m sure these subject lines and advertisements were written by people who had various family situations.  But having that randomly pop up on your phone, between episodes of House Hunters, or even on your calendar, can be like a frontal assault.  If you don’t have a mom anymore.

I remember big mother’s day presents, like getting up early to create a path of construction paper pictures (drawn by yours truly) from her bedroom door leading outside to a new rose bush, and another year replacing that dead rose bush because she said she liked a particular kind of tree in someone else’s yard.  I remember Mother’s Days that were not a big deal, and just calling to say hi.  I figured that it all balanced out.  I remember realizing in high school what she had done for me as a mom and using earnings from my first job to get her something really nice: a Lladro figurine of a mother and daughter.  Just because I loved her, wanted to thank her, and show her that I cared so much.

I just inherited that figurine, and I can barely look at it.  It almost makes me angry when people think it is easier or different because she was sick for so long.  That we knew it was coming, and could prepare.  I don’t get angry, because the ones who think that still have both parents; they don’t know.  And irrationally, I don’t want them to ever understand.  Knowing it is coming takes away ugly shock and abrupt pain, but it does not take away the loss.  It does not ameliorate the fact that I lost a friend.  This is a person upon whom I subsisted, with whom I bonded moments of breathing real air, who shaped my ethics and character, who dealt with both the terrible twos and the terrifying teens, who told me what was normal and when I was being mean, and who slowly became one of my best friends as I grew into an adult.  I never told her everything, but she was always there if I needed her.  Even when I told her things that I thought would make her disappointed in me, she stayed supportive.  She was more than I hoped for on a regular basis, and told me that it was ok to make mistakes as long as you picked yourself up and did the right thing.  She taught me through revealing mistakes she had made and lessons she learned, and never painted herself as perfect.

In the last few years, I moved in and helped my dad take care of her.  We stayed up late talking and occasionally getting drunk together.  We talked over each of our pains and frustrations in life.  She shared with me her internal thoughts and reactions to major steps in life: choosing to marry my dad, moving to different countries, how hard it was sometimes raising three children, and going through chemo.  Sometimes the things she said made me wish I was still a naïve child; it’s true when they say that the treatment is sometimes worse than the disease both on the body and on the mind/emotions.  But we encouraged each other and we were there for each other.  Sometimes I wonder if I asked the right questions and heard the right stories.  What will happen when I need her again?  Because I will.  After I moved out I still called her every few days to talk.  About important things, or nothing at all.  I liked to tell her about cool recipes I’d found (some that she would never like), and she would (mostly) patiently listen.  But she would enjoy that I was happy about it.  I will need her again for big things, small things, in between things… I will need someone to feel happy that I am excited over inconsequential silliness, and to guide me through big decisions.  How will I be without her?  Was I enough of a friend to her?

Sometimes I am almost lost from losing.

Almost, but not.  I refuse to be lost.  She said goodbye to me.  She said things I will never share with anyone, but were a gift.  I was there when she left.  That’s the real difference it made to know it was coming.  Even then, it happened quicker than we thought it would.  She was walking one day, not walking the next, then needed assistance but was still talking, then became non-responsive, and then it was done.  In no time at all.  I feel lucky because I got to breathe in her smell one last time before they took her away.

Some days are easier than others.  I am blessed to have friends who are like sisters, and whose mothers are there for me in any substitute way they can be.  I have Teresa, Marilyn, Patti; I have Sally; I have friends who are mothers, and friends who have lost their mothers; I have friends who are patient and never push; I have friends who have had cancer; I have my sister and brother; I have my Dad.  They are beyond wonderful and I need them all, even though they can never be her.  All I want to do is call her and talk, more than anything in the world.  That simple statement underlies so much that I will face over the next years.  And they are there anytime to listen or for a hug.

As for the email subject lines that throw me off my game, I’m still just raw as all get out.  My Mom cannot call, but she would never want anything pink, bubbly, or both.  I often think MOMMMMM!!! MOMMMMM!!! in my mind, but the letters and punctuation are identical because I’m completely Type A.  I have no doubt that my Mom was proud of me, because she was such a good mom and told me she was proud of me.  I may never be ready for Mother’s Day.

The best part of a holiday is making someone genuinely smile. Even for a second.  Beyond that second is another matter.  On this first Mother’s Day, I will walk along the ocean, I will think of my mom, and I will feel pain.  I have a year of first holidays to torment me, but I will try to not be negative to the extent possible.  I don’t know if I will be able to make her hollandaise sauce from scratch on Christmas morning, but we are going to have eggs benedict come hell or high water.  No, I will make it: it’s 3 ingredients, I’ve made it for years alongside her, and it’s our tradition.  Cooking that breakfast will make me smile, and it will make my family smile.  The recurring but simple problem is that I miss my mommy, and it’s hard to keep smiling sometimes.  It sucks.

– Your huckleberry