Jun 27, 2017 3 min read

My mom has been gone for nearly four years now, and I miss her every day. Still, there are days when I forget she is gone. That it still doesn’t seem possible for her to have died. That this is all a dream, and I will wake up from it and realize she is still here.

This whole week has been one of those days.

Early in the week, my sister stopped to see me at work and brought me a bowl of potato salad.

She had used my mom’s “recipe” to make it.

You may have seen recipes like this: a list of ingredients with no amounts beside them, and when asked for clarification, the maker replies, “you’ll know it’s right when you taste it.”

Boy, my sister hit the mark. Yellow from the mustard, full of eggs and pickles and onions – it was delicious.

In fact, it was so accurately Mom’s that, if I closed my eyes, I could almost be at the table in my Mom’s kitchen, licking the spoon and sighing while Mom covered the bowl and rolled her eyes at me. (I discovered I had actually sighed aloud at work while licking the spoon when my sister laughed and rolled her eyes instead.)

I missed my mom so badly in that moment that it hurt my chest.

It happened again with my sense of smell later in the week.

I caught a whiff of fabric softener, or detergent, maybe, that was an element of my mom’s scent.

For one split second, I believed she was standing just over my shoulder before the weight of reality came crashing down.

Even knowing it was impossible to be her couldn’t stop my disappointment when I turned around and saw someone else standing in front of me.

My ears got involved over the weekend.

I was listening to the radio in the car when a song that my mom loved came on. I debated calling her so she could listen with me, and then remembered she is no longer there to answer the phone.

I began to cry while the music played. I was shocked when the next three songs in a row were the songs that we played at her memorial service. The tears continued to flow.

That is the hard part of it all, I guess. Knowing it can’t be – yet hoping against hope that it is – breeds a space where the hurt can be felt. Where the pain of loss can reside. Where the memory of love lives, I suspect.

I loved my mom. I miss her a lot.

And while I know she is in heaven, singing for Jesus like she loved to do, I sometimes wish she was still here. Even though I know she no longer feels the pain from the chronic illness she had, I wish I could call her and talk to her about nothing.

And though I know I will see her again someday, when the Lord calls me home as well, I don’t know how I’ll ever wait that long.

They say the heart wants what the heart wants.

Today, mine wants my mom.

Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.