Time As An Insufficient Measure of Things
This is a picture of my brother, my Mom, and me. It was taken in April 1998, probably at my brother’s 25th birthday party.
The facepaint is from my youngest cousin, I can’t remember why. I’m showing off my painted tattoo, which is a heart and the word Mom. The baldness is from chemo, I forget which round this was. Mom is 49, probably already planning her big 50th bash in November. She was first diagnosed with breast eight years before this picture was taken.
It is in the nature of things that kids don’t get to see their own parents excited to meet Santa Claus, except maybe in pictures.
This was taken at Disneyworld, in December 2001, in Epcot. For Christmas, all the “countries” in Epcot have their holiday traditions on display. This was in Great Britain, and Mom is meeting St. Nick. I took the picture. I love the expression on her face here, it is one of my favorite photographs.
She looks so happy, and St. Nick is holding her hand. This was three and a half months after our wedding. Mom got to dance at my wedding, I think the song was Barry Manilow, one of her old favorites. She’s smiling here. She can’t open her right eye completely because of a small tumor. The tumor had been there for months at this point.
Four months — four months and a week — after I took this picture, Mom died. We knew then it was coming. Not precisely, not the day, but we knew it was soon. Our first vacation together in over a decade, and our last trip together.
I still miss her. If I could call her up, I would tell her all about my new job, our new cat, a hundred little things. She’d tell me about how many wild turkeys showed up in her yard, how much snow had melted so far, a hundred little things. One of the few things I can make an exact count of is how many days it has been: Mom died two years ago today.
Not that I know how long two years is, if we aren’t talking days, because time doesn’t make sense in any of the ways I thought it did before.
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