symmetry

My co-worker's mother passed away earlier this month. She was in her late eighties, and had been ill for quite some time, so it was not unexpected. I tried to write a few times this week about other things, but I am sad for my friend, and remembering my own mother's terminal illness, and my fingers are not interested in typing other stories just yet.

He returned to work a few days ago, and we had lunch together his first day back in the office. My co-worker is a born raconteur, and had spoken about his mother, a fierce first-generation Italian-American. I never met her, but liked her a great deal based upon his stories.

He told me how she had been lucid almost until the end, determined to go on her own terms, without regrets. She dictated her guest list and visiting hours personally those few final days, and participated eagerly in planning her memorial service, including the menu. While discussing menu options a few days before her death, she casually mentioned how much she liked the cookies from a bakery on the east side. An errant thought for the dessert table, and then she moved on to insist that no chicken be served.

Her son remembered, though, and drove two hours to this bakery to get her the cookies, which cost $18 a pound. The day he brought her the cookies was the day she was finally unable to eat solid food. Undeterred, she put the box next to her bed so she could smell and admire them, doling the cookies out to favored guests.

One of the last things she told him before she died was how the smell of the cookies brought back a childhood memory, long forgotten. On rare occasions, her father would take her on the long drive to this same bakery, and purchase the same cookies. He sketched the story so beautifully that I could see it in my mind; the little dark-haired girl, in her dress and mary janes, so excited to spend the day alone with her daddy on the long drive to the bakery; their special time together. My co-worker's cookies were more than a gesture of thoughtfulness for his dying mother; for that moment, he gave her her father back.