Today I started to use a steam mop that was my Mama’s. It hit me as I was about to unwrap the cord and plug it in that she was the one who had wrapped the cord just so. The last time it was wrapped it was by her hands.
Yeah, sometimes I get sentimental about the tiniest of things.
But they seem so huge.
When I worked for Hospice, we admitted a young mother who all too soon died from cancer. Her best friend had been there through several years of battling the Giant, right there in the trenches with her. She cooked, she cleaned, she cared. It was a few days after the funeral when I stopped by the house. The best friend was there. She was talking, and all of a sudden she stopped and sat down. The tears began to flow down her cheeks.
“I went in the bathroom to put the towels away. The towels in the back were folded differently. Those are the ones she folded. Her towels that she washed and dried and folded and put away. I don’t fold towels like she did. It just hit me. I don’t do it the way she did. Her hands were the last ones to touch those towels,” the best friend sobbed.
I get it.
There’s so much of that, isn’t there? Anytime someone leaves us, no matter how. I remember when my sisterfriend married military and was moving away. We always had these two cups that we used when she came over. One was orange, one was yellow. I am sure I found them at the Fred’s in town. (It was my Super Savings place.) I don’t remember what made me get them, but I did and we used them every single time. I remember unloading the dishwasher the day after she left town. There were those cups. It just felt strange. The cups are here, and now she is not. I didn’t use them again. I just couldn’t. It would not have been the same.
Summer of 2012 Mama and I spent watering the tea olive we planted out at the cemetery for Daddy. We hauled the water out there in washed out milk jugs. The expiration dates were all different, but there was this one. It was Daddy’s birthday. And every time I filled that jug, I would think about how odd it was to see his birthdate on the jug like it was just any other day. Which of course it never will be again. It will always be his birthday.
It’s all a bit too surreal, isn’t it? This is the point when Daddy would have asked me, “So did you unwrap the cord and take care of business or did you save it wrapped like that?”
I unwrapped it. Painstakingly, hoping to remember just how she did it, but of course I can’t. And so when I was done trying to achieve some semblance of clean around here, I just wrapped it up as best I could and let it go. There’s some things I just can’t remember.
But there’s so many that I can. And that will have to be enough.
I Might Need A Nap 
Beautiful.
Thank you. ❤