The Year My Mother Died

"So, April, tell me, two years ago when you grieved so over the loss of your cat in the face of your father's death, were you transferring? Is that what I'm doing?" She was the first person I confided in about this confusion over missing someone I had never met versus the memory of my own mother. Was I crazy or what? "Dan Fogelberg, didn't he sing...?" "Yeah, that's him." I was walking around a car garage with my cell phone stuck to my ear revealing what I thought were ridiculous school-girl-like longings. We were back in town to celebrate the holidays with my husband's family at the time. Christmas was approaching, and I wasn't emotionally ready to be the hostess after returning to our home in North Texas. No, she didn't think I was crazy, and, yes, she did think she had transferred the sadness over losing her father onto the cat, although she still insisted how much the cat had meant to her. It had been a solace to her after her father's death. In fact, for a minute I thought we were headed back to a discussion regarding the decision to have the cat put down versus taking out a major loan in order to save it. Instead, after a long conversation about our families' dealing with their first loss and individual coping during special times, I hung up feeling somehow not too strange. I was comforted for a short while. I really did love my mother, but the bizarreness was just beginning.