My mother and my step-father moved to Texas as I left high school. I dutifully called them on every holiday, but there was one call I would make every year that was more special. From the time I entered university, I regularly called my mom on the first day I watched the snow fly.
Truth be told, that first snowfall call had been made because mom had once told me about how she had run barefoot out into the snow the first time she’d ever seen it. She’d been my age and in her first year of university herself and had called her parents to marvel over it. So I repeated history for her despite having played in the snows of Michigan since childhood. Even after leaving university, I continued the tradition of the annual snowfall call over the intervening years.
In Michigan’s Upper Penninsula, snow flies much earlier than other areas of the Midwest. I once called my mother on the Fourth of July because a freak snow storm had popped up despite the otherwise balmly temps for that time of year. Mom and I decided together to count that instance as an anomaly and continue with our regularly scheduled snowfall phone call in the fall.
I like to think we had both come to view the first snowfall call as a slowly strengthening bond that signaled a fragile peace between us. Privately I hoped it would eventually soothe the lingering pains of my tumultuous childhood.
Over the many years of the snowfall call, subtle changes occurred in our conversations. A slow progression of forgotten words and missed birthdays were easy to forgive but should have offered me clues that something was wrong. More troubling, in retrospect, were the hurried “maybe you’d like to talk to your father” comments that had entered our conversations moments after I’d called. And yet they rang no warning bells. Alzheimer’s was the ultimate diagnosis, but everything happened so slowly that it was simply easier to believe that her age had finally started to show.
Then one snowfall she didn’t known why I had called or why it was important. On Christmas Day year before last, mom hadn’t known who I was.
My mother’s funeral was last week.
As I return from settling her estate after the funeral and launch myself immediately into work, I realize that I have yet to truly grieve for this loss I’ve experienced. I’ve been running from one thing to the next, dealing with this crisis, solving that problem, and general making sure that everyone has been taken care of. At some point, I’ll need to take care of me. Likely not until after I return home from this business trip I’m on, though.
Until then, my dreams will be filled with visions of slowly falling flakes, puffy and white, that come with that first rush of true cold for the season. I can feel the cold now, even in the heat of summer.
Goodbye mom. I love you. I miss you.