A bracelet in time

The little things

Sometimes, it’s the little things. A song we listened to together. A photo of her favorite beach. Or, a chance sighting of a pair of sunglass clip-ons. My mom was forever searching for her clip-ons.

Yes, sometimes it’s the small things that hold the strongest memories for me.

Forty years is a long time to miss someone

It’s been almost forty years since she died. That self-detected lump in her breast led to a radical mastectomy and chemotherapy and hair loss. But the malignancy would not be defeated.

Within two years, I would take her on her last car drive, to South Coast Community Hospital in South Laguna Beach. By that time, the cancer had spread to her bones, and it was all the doctors and nurses could do to keep her from passing out in pain.

Even the best memories are poor substitutes

I was a teenager when she died, so I’ve spent the better part of my life with only the memories of her to provide a mother’s closeness. Those memories have been a poor substitute: a memory doesn’t have a shoulder to cry on, and can’t offer a word of encouragement. Nor can a memory tell you to “break a leg” or “show ‘em all you know.”

A small triumph

And yet, sometimes the little things triumph, bringing her back into focus. Today I am wearing one of those plastic bracelets they give you at the hospital; the nice lady in Admissions gave me one today at the hospital outpatient center where I go for my annual mammogram, a talisman against the cancer that struck down my mother.

The last time I saw her alive, which was the moment she took her last breath, she, too was wearing one of those plastic bracelets. Today, I look at my wrist inside of the plastic bracelet, and I imagine her wrist inside of her plastic bracelet. That little thing, that shared experience brings me comfort.

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