Missing Them

The smell of the hot iron brings her to me. She stands at my shoulder when I am in my kitchen, chopping celery, making chicken pot pies the way she used to. She watches the time when I make fudge. I’m baking banana bread and she’s there – in her Julia Child’s kitchen way while I clean up every little thing as I go. We’re laughing until the song “More Hearts Than Mine” (by Ingrid Andress) comes on and all of a sudden I’m alone again, standing at the sink bawling my eyes out and missing her so hard I can’t breathe.

I’m in the bedroom with Tony while he changes out an electric plug but he’s swearing because it’s not going easy. “You gotta get postured” I tell him. He rocks back on his heels and looks at me. “You gotta get postured,” I say again. “You can’t do anything if you aren’t postured.” Dad always said that, I tell him. He stares at me, his face clearly saying “what on earth?” “Well,” I say, “you got to get positioned in a way that makes it easy for you to complete the task.” I get another look. So Dad and I leave the room and leave him to it.

Another song – “You should be here” by Cole Swindell – has me breathing deeply in the car trying to hold it together. Because he should. He’s missing out. His Fu Fu misses him and so do I. We just aren’t the same without him around. I can’t even drive down his street. I never want to see the house where he was so miserable and our whole world fell apart again.

Almost four years ago Mom is with me in my house and we are decorating for Christmas. A little figure breaks – one that I love – it is a pony with a little rider on the end of a lunge line, and there’s a trainer holding onto the other end. It is me, of course, and Baby Girl on the pony. It comes off the table when Baby Girl (4 at the time) accidentally pulls on the tablecloth and it shatters. I am shattered, too. I start to cry and my Mom comes to me and hugs me and tells me she’s so sorry. I know she is. I know also that it’s probably the last Christmas I’ll have her with me, the last time she’ll be able to tell me she’s sorry. The grief comes in knowing. The figure breaking wasn’t the only reason she was sorry, nor the only reason I was crying.

Yesterday I ordered that little figure off eBay. I paid a pretty penny for it, but I can’t wait for it to arrive. I need that figure. I need to hold it, to close my eyes, to remember clearly that moment. Those last moments, those last everythings. She’ll still smile at me but the words are gone. Her eyes no longer focus on me, except briefly. You can’t leave me, Mom. Please don’t leave me.

Everywhere I go Dad goes too. We have a blow out on the trailer on the way home from a horseshow and I can hear him having a heart attack because we don’t have the small air compressor he bought me in the trailer with us. Because it’s broken and hasn’t been fixed. I tell Tony it must be fixed before the next show. Dad wouldn’t like me traveling without it. Luckily Tony is there and can change out the tire that blew. But we can’t find air for the other tires anywhere. Vandalism has created a problem. We make it home but Dad is sitting in the cab with us the whole way.

Every day, every moment, all the time and everywhere, they are with me.

And I miss them.