: a motherless mother’s day :

---

This one is #25 and you know what? They haven’t gotten much easier. Every Mother’s Day is a reminder, as if I needed one; I’m an orphan. No, it doesn’t come as a shock, but it’s an unwelcome reality. So for half of every May, like clockwork, I disappear into myself. I pull in the welcome mat, close the drapes, lock the door, and hide in a darkness I’ve come to know very well. Metaphorically-speaking, anyway.

December is, oh, so much worse. There’s my mother’s birthday, quickly followed by the anniversary of her death, and Christmas, of course, bursts in on the 25th. It’s a cavalcade of sorrow. Throw in the cold, dark, snowy weather and it’s a wonder I make it out alive. Seriously, December is nothing short of brutal.

Well, buck up, right? Right. Time to recalculate.

I cannot afford to lose a month and a half out of every twelve or 16% (+ / -) of the year sloshing around in sadness. That’s a careless, wasteful misuse of time. That point was made yesterday when I heard Bonnie Raitt cautioning against the evils of wallowing in her song, Nick of Time:

---

🎶 When did the choices get so hard
With so much more at stake
Life gets mighty precious
When there’s less of it to waste 🎵

---

And it’s true. My dear old mom was younger than I am when she passed away, so I clearly need to snap out of this and get on with things. Besides, I’ll have plenty to regret on my death bed, adding to the list at this late date seems like piling on. Since I’m pretty good at using funny as a weapon against despair, I’ll hide behind that and quit being such a baby. After all, I’m a hoot. Really. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you I could make my mother laugh until she couldn’t breathe.

She was a sucker for any story that involved falling down. Her favorite was the time I described mowing the lawn. How I’d zipped along behind the old Toro, stepped into a gopher hole, lost my footing,  stumbled backwards into traffic, and got winged by a passing car. By the end, she was laughing so hard she couldn’t talk or breathe. The phone line was utterly silent for long, long seconds until I heard a soft * click * followed by the dial tone. I smiled in smug triumph.

The story was an outrageous lie, of course, but not out of character; I’m notoriously clumsy. Over the years, I’ve acquired a little tribe of kind, awesome, good-natured friends I consider my family. They just don’t think I’m as funny as I do, but they like me anyway. Besides, no one can roll their eyes with the same panache as my mom, although one has a level gaze that could stop a bullet. 

copyright © 2019 the whirly girl