Dear Mom: Easter Weekend

 

Dear Mom,

Easter weekend was certainly strange this year, but Easter has been strange EVERY year since 2018, as that was really our last TRUE Easter together with you, dad and Aunt Julie.  Things changed after that with you moving to the shore, Covid and Aunt Julie moving to western Pennsylvania.  I've tried to keep the holidays "special", but it hasn't worked out too well.

You weren't well last Easter.  We all came down to see you on the Saturday before, but it was awkward.  You didn't enjoy your favorite foods and could barely eat.  It was upsetting and the last holiday that we, along with you and dad (as well as M, your caregiver) were all together.  It wasn't really happy.

I took Good Friday off, as your grandson was having oral surgery.  He had one wisdom tooth removed (the one that was coming in sideways).  It went well, but he was understandably nervous.  He'd never had any kind of procedure done so we were all a bit unnerved.  I had made a pseudo Easter meal on Maundy Thursday because I didn't know how he would feel.  I couldn't afford a leg of lamb (they are incredibly expensive and everyone was huge), but I did make a couple of shanks which he enjoyed before he rushed off to see his girlfriend. (She was flying to Florida with her family the next day.)  He has seemingly recovered well and we had lamb again for dinner on Easter, but it was just dinner, not a special meal.

This year I didn't keep a very Holy Lent.  I just wasn't focused.  With dad in and out of the hospital and currently recovering in Willow Springs (which is deja vu-y in all the wrong ways), I've been going back and forth to take care of things.  I was there on Saturday and brought dad some chocolate bunny ears, which I hope he will be able to eat.  For so many years he got us solid chocolate bunnies (I was the one who ate most of them), but understandably this year he could not.  (Which is probably why I overcompensated and put together two Easter baskets for your grandson.  Not that he can eat much of it at this point.  Or maybe I should say that he SHOULDN'T.  The peeps are okay, but the harder chocolate will have to wait...that is if I don't sneak it out of his basket and into my mouth!) It's not the chocolate that I miss so much (although I confess that I DO miss it), it's the traditions that have ceased to exist that hurts.

I didn’t help that I couldn’t really find any daffodils this year.  I bought myself 3 tulip plants, but couldn’t find daffodils.  You used to get me one or the other every year.  Somehow I feel that if you were still alive, there would have been daffodils.

Easter Sunday just didn't "feel" right.  It was a beautiful sunny day, but chilly.  I dressed up and so did your grandson (he was the layreader too).  The choir sang.  (The group is so small these days even though we have a wonderful new director who has really pepped us up.  As a result he had some of his students come and sing with us which really helped.)  It was the last Sunday for the pastor who has been filling in during Lent (we are getting an Interim in June) and there was no communion, which was also strange.  (I know there was communion on Palm Sunday, but I wasn't there so.)  Everything just felt "off."

That's how the holidays in general feel:  "off."    I can't figure out how to change or adjust.  There's got to be a way to make them different than other days, even if they aren't the way they once were.  I keep saying I need to make a plan, but I don't know what TO plan.  I need to come up with new and different traditions to mark the occasions, but I can't quite figure out how.  I have just over a month until Mother's Day, so I should start cracking, but...

I miss you.

Love,

Me