Winter jacket

With the temperature dropping to below zero degrees and frost forming on rooftops in the morning, I got out a winter jacket, one that my brother bought me a couple of years ago. This was the jacket I wore first to brave the winter in Canada (until it was not warm enough for -30C temperatures...).

When I put it on, I heard a little tearing sound.

I opened it up and looked inside. I had forgotten about that episode, but the stitches reminded me of it.

At the seams were these threads that mum weaved and sewed. She noticed that the place between the arm and body of the jacket was torn one day when I was visiting her. She took it and before I left, she sat there and mended the tear... that brought a tear to my eyes. The jacket felt warmer and warmed by her touch.

Seeing that just now made me realise again how empty my life has been since she left. I do miss the phone calls, the chats on Skype, the visits (not so much to the hospital...), and the excitement of going to see her every few months. It's all stopped now. Nothing. Gone. History.

All that is left, beside the memories and her belongings sitting in a storage space I dread to enter (but must soon empty...), are little signs and moments like this that remind me of the dear motherly love that I lost and can never find again.

Why am I crying again...?

I should be much stronger.

I should be! I must be!

The other day, a college friend of mum's posted wooden clogs mum gave him once as a momento of Holland ,where we lived. Under that picture were the words "How we miss you so though you have departed..." Another college friend of hers, a caring auntie, commented and shared her own sadness and said she also had a pair of wooden clogs just like those.

Moments like this make me wish I could sleep and blink away that lingering pain.
How my heart wrenches and aches again now