Of cigarettes and longing

It's Christmas time, and I want my mom. It's been over 18 years now, and the gut wrenching grief is long gone, but the ties that hold you to your mom never come undone, even in death. I was shopping last week, in a great mood, looking at some Christmas ribbons, when all of a sudden my mother's favorite Christmas song came on the store speakers. I instantly started sobbing in the middle of the aisle, I came completely unglued in the middle of the dollar store.

Christmas was cookie heaven at our house growing up. We didn't have money, but we had a lot of baked goods. We decorated cut out cookies so much my sister Nancy refers to that time as our "cookie sweat shop" period. We loved decorating them but there really can be too much of a good thing! After a few dozen ginger bread cookies made just so, we would just sprinkle on the glittering sparkles as fast as we could to get them done. But everyone loved my Mom's baking, and Christmas was the time when her talents really shined. Like making Hajji, everyone had to come at some point and taste my mother's baked goods.

What kind of solace is there for the deep, primal loss of your mother? What-that she's in heaven? Or that she's reached Nirvana? Or that she's in Purgatory working out her sins? Or that she's dust?

If I can take license for just a moment I would like to picture my mother in Heaven like this: She is wearing her turqoise polyester pant suit, letting her nails dry from just painting them cherry red. Her permed-up hair is sprayed up good and it has the artificial look of Clairol #5 Strawberry Blonde. She's sitting at a table with a cheap cigarette in one hand, and a beer in the other. Sitting next to her is her wild, untamed, chain-smoking, crazy ass sister Rosie who is borrowing a Vicodin and a beer from my mom and dealing out the cards for them to play KIngs in the Corner. They are in hog heaven, praising Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Halleluia and pass the ashtray! Both of them had childhood trauma's and a lifetime of addictions, but my mother had a heart of gold. I miss that heart.

That's it, that's all. Just that, although my heart is full and I am happier in my life than I have ever been, I still miss her. Always will I guess.