A few months ago, I was admitted to a club
I would have preferred not to join. There is
no secret handshake, and no initiation ritual.
Its membership is far bigger than you might
imagine. And once you are admitted, you
remain a member for the rest of your life.
I keep bumping into fellow members
everywhere I turn. When I called a midwest
cookie company to order a gift recently,
the telephone salesperson told me that,
"Part of my training is to imagine what I am
going to say to my own mother when I
present her with a box of cookies, but
my mom died when I was 16, over twenty
years ago."
How does she deal with this situation year
after year? “For the first few years, a question
like that would have made me cry out loud,
but now I just see her in my mind’s eye and
try to get through the training.”
Another friend lost her mom a few years ago,
and even though she herself has been a mother
for 21 years, she still thinks of her mom when
the seasonal ads start to play.
The oddest thing about the five months since
my mom died is that somehow the world has
