Fever, Grief, and a Mother's Touch
I make a maraca out of my chili pepper pack, listening to the soft rustle of the flakes as I flip their housing back and forth. Suddenly in the distance, I hear a ting, ting, ting, of chili pepper flakes hitting a glass side to side as I shake it onto my pizza. The smell of a salty, fishy breeze of the ocean nearby wafting around me.
I sprinkle pepper flakes onto my pizza in my air conditioned Texas home, bundled up in blankets with the tv blaring soft music. Tissues scattered across the coffee table. My mug now stained by multiple doses of tea and lots of honey. A tear falls down my face remembering.
I hate being sick.
Not for the obvious reasons – the congestion, the uncomfortable fatigue, the ongoing strain on my voice, the raspy cough. But the overwhelming cyclical knowing that my mom is gone.
It sits on my skin and radiates into my bones – her absence. Her picture hangs on the wall behind me. I sit on the couch and look up at it to let her know,
“Mom, I don’t feel good.”
I wrap myself up in the bundle of soft, cloudy goodness. I hug it tight for the love to have somewhere to go. I close my eyes and see us at the beach.
I’m a child, we just had a full day of swimming, splashing, making deep holes in the sand, and building castles right on the shore to watch them wash away. We’re sandy, damp, and tired, the sun is going down. Right across the street our favorite pizza place gives us our giant slice, we shake parmesan and chili flakes onto every centimeter of cheese. The sunset glows behind us and we laugh into the night.
A coughing fit catches me by surprise, I sit up to take a sip of tea. It’s been five years but it still makes no sense that she’s gone. It’s almost as if I just forget for a while. I forget that she isn’t coming from around the corner with a hot mug of tea filled to the brim, a spoon hanging out of it, the scent of the lime she squeezed into it coming off her hands as she hands it to me. I forget that she won’t squeeze me tight exactly as I’m trying to sip so that it spills and we laugh. I forget she wont wake me from my sick nap with her fingers through my hair asking how I’m feeling. I forget until I remember.
The first few days of being sick are always the worst for this. That first onset of extreme exhaustion and helplessness, the delirious realization that I am in fact sick and can’t get up to do much of anything. Like a sick animal, I feel open to the elements, needing security and protection. I start to believe I have none. In the drunkenness of fever I call out to her, but then I remember.
I stomp to the kitchen wrapped in warmth as the fluffy cloak drags behind me. I throw tea leaves into hot water, fill the bottom of my cup with lime and honey and watch the steam flow up from the stream as I pour. When I sip I smell the lime on my fingers and somehow it tastes like how she smelled. When I lay back down in my pile of covers they feel like her embrace. When I smear the VapoRub across my chest it feels like her touch. When I watch a movie to ease the boredom of stillness I laugh like she’s there.
Each day I make a new cup of tea, I go through another box of tissues, another hot bath. I start to feel her a little less. I start getting better and as I do, more confident that she’s always there.
Like the air that I breathe I don’t second guess it. Until I need help remembering again.
If this resonated…
Grief and tenderness live in the small moments — a cup of tea, a slice of pizza, a memory that smells like lime.
If you're navigating your own cycles of missing and remembering, you're not alone.
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