There Will Always Be Snow

I always get a little sad in November.

It’s that time of year when everything gets cold.

It gets chilly outside—and sometimes even on the inside. My heart begins quivering a little.

It’s that time of year we started considering hospice for my mom.

She passed away almost 15 years ago. It has been a long time—but funny how these things stay with you.

The loss of my mother is now part of my circadian rhythm. When I see the plants start to shrivel against the cold, when I see how sad the trees look without leaves, I start thinking about that year that everything changed.

My mother’s doctor had told us in September that it would soon be time to call hospice—which is usually when someone has six months or so left to live. Mom pushed on through the fall, going out less, sleeping more. Thanksgiving was even at her house that year, just so she wouldn’t have to go anywhere. And she rallied with the best of us—she curled her hair with sponge rollers, put her face on, and dressed in some nice clothes.

But we all could see it. She wasn’t the same. She was becoming a shell of what she once was. I think my sister made most of the meal that year. And Mom barely ate any of it.

When Christmas Eve came, I wanted to do something special, so I brought us burgers from Bugaboo Creek. My mother used to love that place because there was a talking stuffed moose on the wall that would say hello and make my son giggle.

But she said that last burger tasted like cardboard to her, even with a lot of ketchup and pickles. It was that darn cocktail of meds she was on by then.

Sometime in December, we called hospice, and they started coming a few times a week that January. They checked her medications, helped her bathe, checked in on us too. They also helped us get a hospital bed for her, which we put in the living room. That is one symbolic move—when you put a hospital bed in your parents’ living room. It was a shrine to her, really.

We watched her slowly shrivel away until February 1, when she passed.

Friends sometimes tease me about being an idealist. An optimist. They say, “I can’t be as positive as you. I don’t see the world the way you do.”

Well, I have a hard time being positive about this. I lament the day we found out she had uterine cancer.

Plus, Bugaboo Creek is no longer there. It has become three other restaurants since that time I brought home her last burger. I went there this past weekend with some friends, grateful that it looks totally different inside.

There’s no sign of the moose on the wall.

I tell friends it’s easier to be positive. It’s way harder not to have hope.

I continue to try to transform my relationship with this time of year. I want it to remind me of other things. I want to think of it not so much as a time of loss, but as a time to honor my mom.

A friend shared with me recently: “If you choose not to find joy in the snow, you will have less joy in your life but still the same amount of snow.”

That’s it.

There will always be snow. There will always be darker times of year. There will always be times of less sun.

My mom will always be gone.

But while I will always get a little sad when I know the snow is coming, on the other hand, I know I might touch a little joy in that winter too.