I'm full on playing football. I'm a guard. My memories and heart are well protected. I have "recovered" from the loss of my mother almost 5 years ago. But I am not the same person I was before by any stretch of the imagination. Someone asked me how I got over my grief and the words that instinctively popped out were just so true. I didn't. I think of my mother as being at work. 24/7. I ignore holidays or I go overboard preparing, planning, occupying my mind so I don't have to face the rip in the fabric of my life. I don't have to think about not having ribs and ice cream on her side porch. Because each memory I face seems to lead to another distinct smile edged with sadness. That side porch with its ribs and ice cream faces home where Jay lived. He was such a part of our lives that when my own family moved to our first home in Texarkana, my then three year old just knew that our new neighbor's name was "Jay". All neighbors were "Jay" and almost every holiday ended with Jay strolling over to join us on that porch for some coffee and desert.
My own family misses out on me a lot during the holidays. I was not prepared for the dynamic shift in tradition that my mother's death created. In a lot of ways, we prepare for that inevitable shift in holiday traditions. We marry, start a family and traditions are redefined and tweaked. Then perhaps, when the balance does shift and parents are no longer left, we have a security blanket already engulfing us. But my separation/divorce splintered my tiny fragile family even more and the routines we worked on having in place had to be scrapped as well.
Football's a hard sport to play. It wears on your body and beats your brain back and forth in your skull. I spent three years trying to re-create those holiday settings that can never be recreated. Now, I'm thinking the next holiday might find us trying another new tradition. I'm hoping that my kids and grand-kids like pizza and beer.
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