Searching for Christmas Spirit on Stormy Seas
As I reflect on my mother’s mortality while shopping at the local Target.
Grocery cart, check. Shopping list, check. Fancy holiday Starbucks beverage, check. Ah, time to settle in to some shopping and sugar.
And was I ever excited to go Christmas shopping. No wonder, since I had sequestered myself in the house all week so that I could get some cleaning and writing done. So yeah, you could say that I was in the mood alright.
You know the feeling you get when you’re tossing fun things into your cart. It’s that dopamine effect, that rush of happiness that I like to call Getting Into The Holiday Spirit. The more I shop, the more I seem to want to shop.
After participating in so much online shopping, thank you Amazon Prime, I was all geared up to sip my cinnamon dolce latte as I wandered through my local Target. It was a nice stretch of morning and complete blissful solitude as I got to peruse, kid-less, down the aisles.
Ah, what heaven.
But just as I rounded the corner into the Christmas aisle, I was suddenly struck with this awful sickening realization that my mother was going to die someday.
It’s not like I hadn’t contemplated all of this before. But this year my mother turned seventy and it hit me like a sick brick…
