loracs | Less Tears Now, But the Missing Is the Same

I’ve been an orphan for 10 years. Today marks a decade since my mother died; ten very long, blink-of-an-eye years.

I can see her, standing at the kitchen sink with her long, thin, grey hair wound into a little knob, held in place by two bobby pins crossing each other to form an “X”. Softly, she is singing and yodeling, which I can just barely hear over the running water.

I can feel the soft and loosening skin hanging from her upper arm. As a small child, I would cling to her big, soft arm and inhale the smell of her, a mix of sweat, cigarette smoke, Joy dish detergent and most often, onions. As an adult, who only saw her every few years, I took every chance I could to sit next to her and hook my arm around hers. She smelled the same minus the cigarette smoke.

On one trip, several years before she died, I video taped my mom telling some family stories - ones I'd heard over and over again. She loved to tell them. Mom had a hospice nurse visit her weekly for the last several months of her life. After the required medical stuff, this woman would sit at the dining room table and mom would "bend her ear" with one story after another. I will forever be grateful to this woman for listening to her.

I've never watched the video, maybe this year I will.