Today I Realized I Miss My Mom

My mom passed 7 years ago. I mention her in conversation, I’m not sure if I’d say “often” or “occasionally”, maybe somewhere in between. Maybe it’s an expression of my missing her, I don’t know. Didn’t stop to think about it until today. She unexpectedly died at the age of 63.

I’ll always be grateful for that last weekend she spent with me. We didn’t know it would be her last, but I think maybe she did. Hubby decided to take the day off and cook her an old Guyanese dish that he knew she loved. He loved it too and her being there was the excuse he needed to cook it so he wouldn’t be cooking it for one. They were both born in Guyana, the kids and I were born here in NYC, so many of the really old school dishes that these two liked, the kids and I would eat while tearing from either the spiciness, the bitterness, or both.

My older girls and I watched a Hallmark movie with mom that Saturday, I never could remember which it was, we chatted throughout the movie. The younger kids were barely 4 and 5 years old. They had their opportunities to play games with grandma, draw with her, and have her feed them “her” desert — which really wasn’t hers, she just used it as an excuse to feed them something sweet and see their faces light up with each mouthful while they skipped around the room singing silly songs as little ones do.

At some point, while we sat across from each other chatting, my right eye’s lower lid began to twitch. A common superstition in our culture is that it’s an intuitive sign of something bad to come.

I said “mom, my bad eye is jumping”, which is the term we use culturally to describe this thing that was the bringer of bad news. Mom’s response was for me to lick my finger and draw the symbol of the cross along my eyelid. I laughed and protested the idea of spitting in my own eye saying that doing so wouldn’t change what was to come. This lead to a mini-lecture from my mom about getting back on my spiritual path (I had taken a sabbatical from all things spiritual — a story for another day.) Of course, I promised. No intention to do it anytime soon but I did promise, only to make her happy.

The following day as I sat on the floor and helped tie her shoelaces, I tried to convince her to stay the day, spend another night. She smiled, she said no, she missed her bed…

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