If
you’ve lost your parents, you understand the total randomness of grief shifting
from background to foreground. At unexpected times, I long for my parents’
humor, support, and unquestioning love. I wonder what advice they would give,
what insight they’d have when I struggle with some miniscule ripple, or get
pulled down and under by a catastrophic tidal wave of living.
Next
month, my husband and I celebrate our 40th anniversary. I imagine my
parents’ funny card arriving in the mail box. I open the envelope to an added,
handwritten note (sometimes Mom’s precise script, other times Dad’s bold
scrawl), and find a check. The amount of money never mattered. It truly was the
thought that counted.
The
tightness in my chest, the inability to inhale deeply under the weight of old
grief, constricts me. For some reason, this year I hunger for another card in
the mail. I ache to recognize the handwriting on an envelope. I feel loneliness
and loss.
Copyright 2019 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman
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