I'll Have a Side of Heavy Thoughts With that Church Supper Recipe Book, Please

When going through the Momster's house after she died, trying to sort out paperwork and medications and throw out food and dodge felines, my sisters and I came across all manner of interesting items. I remember many rosaries and an ungodly yet entirely predictable number of books, wrapped-up gifts for someone's children (also predictably, not us), cat toys galore...I had to buy a Sherpa soft-sided pet carrier and a duffle bag to haul home my curious inheritance, which includes:

And also, this:  

Now, you might be wondering, what on earth does this calorie-laden publication have to do with the Melmeister's recovering-alcoholic and very dead mother?

The answer of course is: EVERYTHING.

And it also leads to another question: what on earth was my mother doing with this? I'm guessing it was just an impulse buy at the grocery store or Walgreens or something; goodness knows I'm susceptible to this as well. But why did she get it? For all the church socials and intimate get-togethers she didn't go to? Did she want to whip up some of the recipes? History is, and shall remain, silent about this. But tonight, as I was lazily flipping through the pages, I felt, vaguely, the presence of a ghost. Not an actual ghost, of course, but rather an insubstantial but mournful wraith of all the things that went undone in her life, all the things she didn't achieve on her "Bucket List" that she threw together after her diagnosis, and which we found the night before I flew back to California. This Taste of Home magazine, all of a sudden, represented all of her life she hadn't actually, actively lived; the deeds left undone, the words unsaid, the profundities unwritten, the roads not taken, the dinners not cooked. But, I daresay, all of it imagined. 

And perhaps, even feared. Who knows? Maybe it was the fear that kept her from doing all that she thought about. But I know that in more than a few ways, my life does mirror hers: I am a person who embraces an internal, solitary existence--I'm surrounded by people yet regularly retreat to an inner landscape as unpopulated as I can wish for-- I admire and acquire pretty and pleasing things and then let them go unconsumed and unenjoyed, and I imagine the life I could lead, that I want to lead, some day, but don't. Not right now. 

My mother's right nows ran out. She had no more some days left.

And some day (ha), I won't either.