Mom’s 11 Year Anniversary & Summer Cocktails

The thing about memories, is that you don’t know that they are memories until… they are. I didn’t know to take notice of all the small moments because I assumed my Mom would always be here. I read a quote from CS Lewis, I can’t remember it exactly but it more or less said, the absence of your mother is like the sky, it spreads over everything. I feel that. It has been 11 years, but the grief of losing my mother is always present. Maybe it isn’t loud, maybe I have learned a way to walk around it most days, but it is always present in that one spot in my heart that is missing her. Her hug, her laugh, her smile, her advice, and her way of making me feel like I was special.

I think of my Mom every day. Her image, maybe her voice, maybe a memory, but at least once per day the word Mom floats through my brain. Every once in a while, I smell something or I’m eating something or I’ll see something that invokes a strong emotion in me. A longing to have my Mom back. Over the past year when these memories overwhelmed me, I wrote them down in my notes. Last week I was copying and pasting those memories into this blog post when one of the Kids came into my room to talk. I copied and cut it, but I never pasted it. Once I went back to my phone I forgot what I was doing, and continued on, probably playing BINGO lol. The next morning I woke up and I had a memory of something silly that my Mom had said years ago, but it made me happy to remember it, so I quickly picked up my phone to type it in my notes but the notes section just said, MOM and it was blank! All my notes from the past year, gone. Heartbreaking. For whatever reason, I remember specific memories at specific times and write it down with those specific emotions and I can’t replicate them. It’s sad but I am comforted in knowing that over the next year and even years, there will be more memories to remember. Ones that I may have thought were lost, that will be found, stuffed in my brain just waiting to reappear when I need them most.

Most of my memories with my Mom are in the kitchen. No, I should say, I have LOTS of memories of her in the kitchen but they are not the majority of my memories. I can just picture her in there, a LOT lol. I can picture cooking with her as a child, getting yelled at in there as a teenager, and learning how to ACTUALLY cook with her as an adult. I can picture her making my Dad’s lunches, teaching my Sister how to measure ingredients, baking with HBear and making fresh pasta with Ninja. My Mom gave me the tools to provide my family with nourishing meals. She also taught me to love working in the kitchen and what a gift cooking truly is. She made me feel like a real chef, even after I cut a jalapeño for salsa and touched my eyes and had to call her 3 provinces away to walk me through the screaming PAIN lol. BTW she forgot to tell me not to go to the bathroom and wipe after cutting jalapeño peppers!!!! LOL. So maybe I’m not that great in the kitchen lol but when I was in there with her, she made me believe that I was. She even gave me the confidence to start this cooking blog! 

There was this time, I was in grade 8 and I really wanted to apply to Space Camp however science wasn’t my strongest subject and I had a lot of self-doubt. Mom didn’t push. The night before the application deadline she came up to me and told me that I was making a mistake. I was letting self doubt rob me of an opportunity and opportunities were not to be wasted.. She told me that I was just as smart as those other kids and had a lot to offer. When I cried that I didn’t have enough time to write an essay to turn in with my application, she put on a pot of coffee, got full scrap from the office and set me down at the kitchen table. She sat up with me all night, proofreading, editing, and challenging my opinions of Canada and it’s role in the space race. Fascinating stuff lol! I was proud of myself when I turned in the paper the next day. I was even more proud, when I was accepted into the Space Camp program and it was one of the best experiences of my life. Even if she didn’t understand the subject, she would study for every exam with me, proofread every essay and pushed me to challenge myself and question things, to learn and to take classes that would help me grow as a person. My Mom always made me feel intelligent and let me know all the time, placing being smart over all other qualities I felt were SO important at the time.

As my Kids are getting older, I remember some of my firsts. Like my first time seeing marijuana. I had gone to a social with a friend. He was also my big crush and the most popular boy at school. I was in grade 9, and it was a social that was out of town and his whole family was there including his gorgeous older brother and his girlfriend, later his wife. About halfway through the evening we went outside for a cigarette and my friend’s older brother pulled out a joint. When it got to me I was so embarrassed! I said no thanks and they laughed at me. When I got home, I ran straight to my Mom‘s bedroom. She was in bed and I crawled in with her and she cuddled me up while I told her what had happened. She laughed at me too, lol but then she looked me dead in the eye and told me how brave I was! She reminded me how much courage it took to stand with my convictions, to say no when the pressure on me was to say yes. That could’ve been a moment that made me feel so small that I wouldn’t have had the courage to say no the next time, but it didn’t. Because my Mom made me feel, brave. Like I could say, do, or be anything.

My Mom and I were 2 peas in a pod. And I never felt funnier than when I was talking to my Mom. She made me feel like a stand-up comedian! Especially on the phone. In fact, I think our relationship was always best when we were on the phone with each other. I’m not a phone person, but I could talk to my Mom for hours! Once I moved here, we didn’t have a phone relationship anymore. Except for that one time. SBean was born on the same day that Mom started chemo. Because I had a C-section I had to stay at the hospital for 3 days. Because my Mom was undergoing chemo and radiation, she was not allowed on the labour and delivery floor. Those 3 days in the hospital were amazing. It was like a freaking holiday lol. I didn’t have to get up, all the laundry was done for me, all my meals were made for me, and my only responsibility was getting to know my new baby girl. Over those 3 days I logged a lot of hours on the hospital phone. Although my Mom was only a few streets over, it was like old times! We sat on the phone for hours lol gossiping, talking about the meaning of life, lol and me telling her all about the new baby that I would bring home to her. She laughed. She may have laughed until she peed herself, my Mom made me feel funny and there was nothing better than making her laugh.

My wedding was kind of a disaster lol or at least the lead up to it was anyways! We planned our wedding on the rooftop of a resort/vineyard/winery in Osoyoos, in August. We warned everybody about the heat and had sun umbrellas for everybody, water on hand, and we planned our wedding for the evening so it wouldn’t be as hot as 2 o’clock in the afternoon. We didn’t have a Plan B because we are getting married in August, in the desert. I checked the farmers almanack and the history of Osoyoos over the last hundred years… No rain. Until August 9, 2010, our wedding day… It rained… A lot. I didn’t realize that the outdoor wedding of my dreams was being moved inside to a generic ballroom, but Ninja did, and so did my Mom. I just remember the flurry of everybody working so hard to make it the day of our dreams while I was obliviously happy getting my hair done! I remember my Mom walking into the suite and she look like she was about to burst into tears! She started in about how nothing was working out and I said to her, “but how do I look?“ Lol and she stopped and I will forever remember how she looked at me. Like I was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. My Mom was always loud and hard but this time she went quiet and soft, and said, “you look beautiful”. My Mom made me feel beautiful. Even when I had a face full of acne as a teenager, and even when I was huge when I was pregnant with HBear, she always made me feel like there was nobody on this planet more beautiful than her daughter, me. Of course she probably made my Sis feel that way too and HBear as well. Mom had a way of making everyone feel special.

This year to honour Mom’s memory, Ninja and his Dad built me the little library of my dreams!

I bought a book embosser from Fusion Art on Etsy and finally found a place for the MANY MANY old books we have accumulated over the years! My Sis even delivered her family’s old books and we have had NUMEROUS offers of donations since it has gone up! THANK YOU!

The library turned out so well and my MMBesty made the sign for us! We named it, Kathy Castle’s Little Lending Library! It has always been a joke because my Mom’s maiden name was Little and her married name was Castle. We had a sign over our from door growing up that said, Ron & Kathy’s Little Castle.

I have always liked the idea of a little library and I know Mommies would have too! My Mom loved to read and she was a big fan of lending out her books, collecting books from people and then shuffling them along throughout her friend groups. We were at the library all the time and about once a month she took us to The Book Shelf, a second hand bookstore that I loved! Mom would be happy. I’m glad that her memory will provide happiness to people, hopefully for many years to come. My Mom is gone. Way too early. 11 years of not hearing her booming voice or her joyful laugh. 11 years without her advice and words of confidence. But, I was lucky enough to have the best Mom in the entire world raise me for 35 years. I am SO lucky that every day she made me feel beautiful, smart, brave, funny, and loved. Thank you, Mommies, I miss you. L.O.V.E.