2004

There are some years that have more significance than others for some people. They are the years whose significance we never forget. The year of our birth or the year we graduated from high school, for instance. Or the year you got married, had a baby, last fit into your skinny jeans. We remember the songs on the radio and the movies that were popular. Hell, we even remember the weather patterns (if you have weather, that is). For me 2004 is one of those years whose importance outweighs most others.

It was the year the Patriots won the Super Bowl and the Red Sox won the World Series.

It was the year Mr. C and I took our last trip to Italy for some time, I suppose. Because...

It was the year I got pregnant.

And it was the year my mother died.

Three years ago, this week. In 2004.

They say that time has a way of helping us forget. Of healing all wounds. Enabling us to go on. As time goes on memories get soft around the edges. But honestly there are some things about that week leading up to my mother's death that I will never forget and I have no desire to do so.

It was unseasonably warm for the end of February in Massachusetts. The irony that my sun worshiping mother would choose to leave this earth on such a balmy day was not lost on me. It seemed fitting that she would break free from her shackles of pain and sickness on a day when her spirit could dance in the warm breeze, unencumbered by morphine, chemotherapy and cancer.

I'll never forget how her cool, dry hand felt on my cheek the last time she looked at me, the last time she really saw me without the veil of impending death covering her eyes. She said goodbye without saying a word, and though she lingered for a few more days she was never the same. She was never really there with us but instead in that space between life and death. I still lean my head into that phantom touch. I close my eyes and imagine she's still there in front of me. I imagine that I let myself cry in front of her instead of turning away to hide my pain. And I remember her face and her look that said she was at peace with what was going to happen.

The next few days are a blur of visitors, nurses and medications. Until the day she died. That day I remember vividly. And that's my memory to keep, for myself and my daughter one day. I may not remember which of her old friends came to pay their respects at her wake - in my defense there were hundreds of people there - but I'll remember each and every hour of the day she could no longer fight the cancer that was ravaging her body.

Is it a coincidence that my mother, the Red Sox fan(atic), died the same year the Sox finally won the World Series? Probably, but I'd like to think she had something to do with it. Our trip to Italy was planned months before my mother died, but I raised many (many, many) a glass in a silent toast to the woman who never saw the need to leave her country for far away lands. And my husband and I had decided to start a family that year, but after I lost my mother I finally realized how important she was to me. We named our daughter in her honor. There is a picture of her in my daughter's room. She is in my thoughts every day.

Three years have done nothing to dull the pain of her death. I still remember hugging her thin frame to mine, wondering if my shoulders felt as frail as hers and knowing that, yes, they probably did since our bodies closely resembled each others. I remember the feel of her hand, the shape of her fingernails, the roundness of the knuckles in contrast to her long, thin fingers. And I remember missing her immediately upon her passing. That memory has not dulled. The wound has healed but the scar remains. And I go on.

But I carry her with me. Always.