Just a touch of holiday melancholy...

My mother's last pair of glasses lay on a shelf in my bedroom.   And now, during the holiday season, I look at them often.   

The other evening, a friend and I watched a very old movie starring the very young actors, Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and Angela Lansbury.  Curled up on the couch I wondered if Mother ever saw this movie.  I need to call and ask her, I think.  Just as quickly, of course, I realize no such call can be made.

In the Dollar Store recently, I saw red socks in various Christmasy patterns.  Mother had socks for all holidays--and red was her favorite color.

The winter-time jokes we made about sending her wheelchair skimming across the ice...laughing that she could skate on one leg--via the chair--while I'd just fall on my arse with two legs....  

Melancholy.  Softer and gentler now.  Ending with a smile.

When a daughter loses a mother, the intervals between grief responses lengthen over time, 

but her longing never disappears. It always hovers at the edge of her awareness, 

prepared to surface at any time, in any place, in the least expected ways.
― Hope Edelman, Motherless Daughters:  The Legacy of Loss