My mother died in September. She was quite young, and she was a good mother.
Grief is a strange emotional state. I don’t miss her, in that way that other people seem to. I don’t look at old photos and feel nostalgic. I don’t pick up the phone to call her. I didn’t cry at her funeral. I was confused for a long time, because I wasn’t sad.
Then I realized that I was, more accurately, so sad it had stopped being a recognizable state. Sad is sad, and happy is sad, and breathing is sad. Like every atmosphere, you get used to it. It becomes invisible. Some days seem okay now, and some are like being in the bottom of a well.
My mother adored Christmas. She loved to feed people, and she loved to buy them things. She wrapped beautiful presents. She bought a new artificial tree every year, even though the whole point of an artificial tree is that they last forever.
My husband mystified her. They were, perhaps, the most completely opposite people I’ve ever known. He was the only one who ever flustered her unerring ability to pick out the perfect gift. So, he didn’t get gifts. He got bonbons.
This year, I booked a vacation house with no internet connection and no cell phone reception, and I am going to skip everything.
Jessica Thinks 