Without jinxing things it appears that we may have Mom’s condo sold (conditions come off tomorrow). This is a huge relief, it is one of the major details that has been holding up the estate (and therefore being able to “move on”) and for various reasons being able to sell it in today’s market was a concern. Logically I am relieved and know this is a good thing, but I find myself weeping at the thought of one more goodbye.

It’s silly, I know. Mom hadn’t lived there for a number of years, but she loved her condo. It always smelled like fresh baking (as long as you didn’t come right after she had just been sneaking a cigarette). When she first moved in we quickly figured out that during my lunch hour I could walk up the hill, have a 10 or 15 minute visit and then walk back to work. More often than not Mom was puttering in her kitchen, cookies on the counter (usually a variety), all kinds of newspaper clippings of things she thought might interest me or recipes to try, and the temptation to snatch something tasty before heading back to work. How I miss being able to sit at that kitchen counter and chat with her! How I miss her insistence that I take her clippings to read, her calls when I am at work that would frustrate the snot out of me because she was trying to describe something on her tv (or as most of us know it, computer) that looked different and she couldn’t find the thing to make it do what she wanted.

It’s funny. I was living in Calgary when my parents moved off the acreage (where I had lived since I was 5) and into town. I thought that was hard – didn’t seem right that they should move from “home”. But that was a piece of cake, it seems, to saying goodbye to this condo. It was the last place of her own where Mom would bake, maybe call me from to tell me to pop by after work for a hot banana muffin, and maybe one of the last pieces of time where I was really allowed to feel like the daughter before our roles began to reverse a little as her deteriorating health meant she needed a little more help. To me Mom’s kitchen & recipe book will always be the place I seek to “visit” her, not a gravestone that holds only sorrowful memories.

So, these bricks and mortar that were nothing but an inanimate object somehow housed a lot of love. I know she lives in my heart, my kitchen, and even my yard and flower garden, but oh how I wish I could sidle up to her counter, leaning on it with my elbows, watching her bake, tasting her efforts, and have her wrap her arms around me one more time and let me feel safe, loved, and cherished.

Wishing you all a Mother’s Day filled with warm and love-filled memories, be they new ones from time together or the “old” ones that are held in your heart, never to be contained to simple bricks and mortar.

With love, Glenna