I am visiting again. My Dad is okay. He makes it through each day doing what he always has done..when my mom was alive. All the while missing his wife as though he is missing a limb. I miss her too. It is coming up on two years since she died. You would think that it would be getting easier to deal with, but it hasn't. Sure, I have learned to live with her absence, so has my dad, but it does not take away the pain she left in my heart, and his, when she died.
Funny though, the picture that was sitting on the table since her death, where Dad eats his meals, has now been moved to the counter. What does this mean? Is he forgetting? Has his love for his wife grown faint? Or has he, like the rest of us, learned to live without her in our lives? I think the latter to be true. In order to move forward you have to leave something behind. This fact really hurts like hell.
I find myself going into her closet to catch a whiff of her perfume. Is there any smell left? Has time robbed me of that as well? I search and look and finally, in another closet, find a blazer she wore a lot. I smell her perfume. I smell her. I breathe in and my memory takes me to a place where she is still alive and laughing. Where all is right with the world. It is fake, it is phoney. She is not here, she is gone, never to be seen again. I can not stand this. The pain of her absence is more than I can bare alone. I will live the rest of my life without my mother. Soon, my dad will join her.
I look to the one who alone gives peace, who alone gives comfort. I have nothing but the promise of the cross of Christ. I cling to it. There is nothing else.
