Catching Up

 I miss my mom. 

I miss Maddie. 

I miss Darren. 

This is a crowded month when it comes to remembering those passed. My mother went away in the middle of October, 2022. Our best and forever dog shuffled off her mortal coil back in October of 2013. Darren started this preoccupation with autumn back on October 24, 1985. 

If you're keeping score, that's more than forty years of flinching every time the page on the calendar features pumpkins and falling leaves. 

I know. There are so many other folks out there who have lived lives affected by so much more loss. This is only exacerbated by my habit of writing celebrity obituaries here on my memories vault. The departure of the funniest person I ever knew left a hold in my comedy firmament that remains to this day. Not that my mother and our dog weren't hysterical in their own particular idiom. My world requires a good sense of humor. 

Which is odd that all these years later I still find my metaphorical tongue searching for that metaphorical missing tooth. My mother had lost both her parents by the time she was a young mother of one son, with two more waiting in the wings. I never knew my mother's parents. My mother did get a chance to meet both Darren and Maddie. 

That bit of cosmic tag gives me some pleasure. My mom also got to spend some quality time with my son as well. This gives me some sense of completion, though I don't know if we ever finished our marathon gin rummy game. Our last hand played together did not include a settling of points from the previous sixty years. 

I expect this is part of how I will spend my own time in eternity. 

Not that eternity has any time.

Which is fine, since there seems to be a lot of catching up for me to do. With Maddie, Darren and Mom.