Holding on

The last smoothie that I made for her - the one with coconut milk and mango and vanilla and honey - languishes at the back of the fridge. I can't bear to think of anyone else consuming it, yet I can't bring myself to throw it away. Not yet. Not yet. It's still to near, too fresh.

The last bar of chocolate she tasted sits neglected on the bedside table, the chunk we broke off to give her conspicuously absent as it seems to wait to fulfill its purpose. "No one is going to want to eat that bar," we said, and yet it sits.

We go through drawers and bins and boxes, we reminisce over jewelry and trade stories over half forgotten tokens. We wonder over artifacts of our mothers life, details and nuance now secreted away forever. And we can do this with a healing flair, a sense of love, admiration, honor, continuation...

But the dates she bought before she left, the yogurt only she would eat...these things I cannot touch. I know that they will spoil and they will die, but for now they represent the closeness of her life, the nearness of her very being, and I cant fathom the emptiness that will be left behind once the ever present presence of her has disappeared.