I took the round white lid off the small blue jar, thinking of Mom and how I came to have her moisturizer cream.  Silly really, but somehow that jar had become important to me.  A link to my sweet Mom who was no longer around to need it.    I thought of her smooth skin, her blemish-free complexion.  I remembered her soft hands on my forehead when I was sick as a child; nothing else comforted me like her touch.  I wonder if she knew how much that helped me, healed me.

A week after Mom passed away my youngest sister and I went to the assisted living facility to sort and clear away the remainder of the things in her room.  Our siblings had begun the task and we were to finish it.  We entered the room quietly, sort of reverently, thinking that only days ago we had been here visiting with her.  Some things were set aside to be given to others in need. Medical supplies that could be donated had their corner, practical items still useable were in another spot.  Pictures were boxed, set aside for later when we could bear going through them.  Packing her clothes to give away we each found a piece that had meaning to us, to take for now and decide later whether to keep.  In the tiny kitchenette I chose her favorite drinking glass and a coffee cup.  Just things, but things that kept Mom close.

We worked the corner with her hospital bed last.  While my sister stripped the bed and folded blankets I emptied the nightstand.  A petite lamp, box of tissues, arthritis gel.  And a small blue jar of moisturizer cream.  As soon as I spotted it I thought of her smoothing a bit of cream over her face and throat (turkeys have necks, ladies have throats).  She had used it consistently over the years.  We were of course free to take anything we wanted.  I slipped the jar, ¾ full, into my purse.  I don’t know why it was important that I bring it home with me, but in moments of grief our actions don’t always make sense.

Now, a year and a half later, the jar was nearing empty.  How would I feel when I had collected the last dab of that cream and smoothed it over my own throat?  Why did it matter?  I could purchase another identical jar when this one was depleted.

But I don’t want a new jar.  I want Mom’s jar.  I want Mom.

And there it was.  A fresh wave of grief.  Not the tidal wave that came when I learned of her death, not the ongoing sadness that washed over me that first year.  Just a big splash of unexpected missing her.  I knew the Lord would bring me through this new wave as He had the others.  Until then, I would have to wade through.  And dip sparingly from Mom’s blue jar.