Dearest Rachel –
It’s possible that things across town are starting to settle into a sort of normalcy for Mom these days. I had offered to bring dinner over yesterday, like we’ve done for the past couple of weeks, and while she accepted that offer, as usual, she kept adding things that she was going to prepare. At first, she just let me know that Daniel and I should bring over “something to go with a salad and corn on the cob,” but by the time I decided to wrap up my ‘work’ day and head home, she’d changed her mind. Instead of the corn, which she now considered too much trouble to prepare (and I get it; who wants to monitor a boiling pot in the middle of summer, anyway?), she was putting a tray of Italian meatballs into the oven instead, and telling me that she probably wouldn’t need anything added, unless I could think of anything.
By the time we got there, she’d baked the meatballs a second time, the latter time in a bath of bolognese sauce with some mozzarella cheese on top. She had also emptied out a half-full box of vermicelli (so much for not bothering with a boiling pot in midsummer), and prepared a half-dozen slices of Texas toast, in full garlic bread regalia, for the three of us. And here I thought I was trying to save her the trouble of going through all that hassle, when it may have been exactly what she needed to do in order to feel ‘normal’ again.
Well… almost normal. Things are never going to be the same as they were; for her, for Daniel, or for myself, without Dad. That’s just how loss is; something is different now, and always will be. Meanwhile, the ordinary things of life still need to be dealt with (and then some), so we all just need to address them, and keep moving forward.
And then, there are the little rituals of the past that connect us to the present, like these Thursday evenings at Meema’s, that allow us all to, not so much pretend that nothing has changed, as affirm to ourselves that some things don’t have to change much just yet. Sure, I’ve inherited the responsibility of opening the meal up in prayer, but apart from that, it’s the three of us eating together, just as before. Even more so, since Mom now seems to have gotten back into the routine of actually preparing things, instead of relying on Daniel and myself to bring something. I’m not sure if that’s a means of seizing control (which seems like an odd expression to be using when it comes to describing her, but I won’t deny that what Daniel and I would bring over was not food that she would normally partake in), but if it is, what of it? Maybe that’s just what she needs, under the circumstances.
The conversation around the dinner table is fairly anodyne, but it was ever such. Not so much in the way of politics, sports, or even the news in general – as it used to be when Dad was his place at the table – save that which is happening in the neighborhood, the things that she can see from outside the living room picture window.
So yes, things aren’t exactly ‘normal’ here as we used to define the term, and they never will be, but these little things allow us to latch on little bits of it, and build something that, unless you look at it a second time, looks very much like what we used to know; it’s back to ‘norbal,’ for now.
And as we try to get it that much closer, I’d appreciate your eye on all of us, honey, and your best well-wishes. I’d say we’re still going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 