December 9, 2017         - A friend asked a simple question.

         After I thought about it a while, I realized it wasn’t really a simple question, it was a real question and it came straight from her heart.  Shot me through just like an arrow, yet I put on the brave face and the brave voice and said I was okay.  How could I tell it was the real question?  She said,

         “How are you doin’?” she asked with strong eye contact as she squeezed my hand.  That did it – I almost fell apart, but I put out my chin and squared my shoulders, pressed on my ‘I’m-okay smile’ and didn’t tear up or cry.  I put up the “stiff upper lip with the carry-on attitude.”  That phony smile is easy to hide behind; but does it do any good?

         I knew what she meant; she wanted to know how I was handling the loss of my Mom.

         I have been trying to not admit it, or ignore it and hoping it will all go away.  The grief, the sadness, and that emptiness isn’t going away. It’s like a shadow just off stage waiting for an inopportune moment to drop in and disrupt my emotional state.

         Out driving to a grocery store to get butter for Christmas cookies this afternoon I was thinking about a 40^th birthday party I recently attended for a young man. He isn’t a young man now, but when I met him he was a young tyke.  He is the son of one of my friends, my backdoor neighbor friend from when I lived at Trojan Lane.  I had a front door neighbor – across the street, and then I had a backdoor neighbor who lived directly behind me where a side street looped around. 

         When my backdoor neighbor’s mother died, I never knew what to say to her about her Mom, Jackie.  Her mom was a wizard at finding a bargain when you were out shopping with her. When her Mom visited, she treated me like I was some sort of adopted daughter of hers.  It was a wonderful feeling to be included in such “family love” of that sort.  But, I noticed after her Mom died every time she would speak with me she would ask about my Mom.

         “How’s your Mom?” Becky would genuinely ask and I would genuinely tell her.  It was like a knife pain to my heart that she asked, because her Mom was no longer with us, I felt the loss of her Mom for her every time she asked about mine. Not a single conversation did we have these years since her Mom’s death that she didn’t ask, “How’s your Mom?”

         Well the shadow made an appearance today while I was parking my car at the grocery store as big fat tears started running down my face because I hadn’t heard the phrase, “How’s your Mom,”  in a while.  It was a hard thing to realize that my intimate friends will no longer ask that question and I better plug the hole in my heart with something else.  But, the real question is plug it with what.

         Then, I took a call tonight from a friend who is down with the flu, her fever broke, and she has a bad case of cabin fever and wanted to talk about something that had upset her.  I tried my best to calm her down and then it dawned on me.  She’s also lost her Mom this past year and what she really wanted to do was not talk to me.  She wanted to just dial her Mom and talk to her and she couldn’t.

         “It’s okay, you are upset and I know what you really want to do is call your Mom and talk to her, but you can’t call her, I know.  I know exactly how you feel.”

         I heard, “Sniffle, sniffle . . . .exactly how I feel,”  she said, sniffled again and then she composed herself.

         Well I lost my composure about five minutes after I ended that phone call.  I too, would like to call my Mom and I can't.  Maybe by morning these tears will subside.