My mother was born on July 3, 1940. She died 21,627 days later. She never made it to age 60. She didn't quite make it to see the year 2000 and its Y2K hysteria come and go (she missed it by 106 days).
Since she left us, we've moved into three different homes and lived in two different states.
So many pets have since entered our lives. She would have loved and mourned them all.
Family vacations, get-togethers, weekly telephone calls - all missed. I think she really would have loved being able to video chat on a computer or smart-phone (if we could have persuaded her to get one). That technology wasn't really available until quite a while after she died.
Of course, she also missed the 911 attack, the Columbia tragedy, too many school shootings, a special type of imbecile "elected" as president (despite 70% of the voting population NOT having voted for him), and these past few mask-wearing years full of anti-vax and anti-mask dip-shits pushing their selfish agendas. But let's not continue down this particular road of negativity and instead just focus on today.
In fact, I should stop listing things altogether. It would be impossible to detail this loss; trying to do so only suggests that the impact of her passing can be quantified. It cannot.
My focus is really just about today. Today in particular. It is seasonably cold, but there is no snow on the ground nor is snow likely until January. There is nothing very special about today except maybe that it is the day before Christmas.
This will be the 23rd Christmas we get without my mother. She went out of her way to make the holiday special for everyone. This was certainly true for my wife and I who spent most of our holidays far from home and family. She kept us connected and close despite the miles and the cold. In 1999, when she died, she not only took Christmas with her, but all the other holidays, vacations, cook-outs, weekly phone calls… and so much more.
What makes today personally remarkable is that it puts me one day older than what my mother got.
I got "more" but it continues to feel like less.
