The Vase Broke Today

Way to give it all away up front. But that’s just what happened this morning.

After my shower I was reaching for the cotton pads to apply toner to my face when I accidentally pushed the whole cotton “tower” against the vase and it slide off the shelf and crashed to the floor.

It broke into a few pieces too many. It cannot be fixed.

The vase was mint green with a pretty fuchsia rose to the front of it. The fuchsia rose that broke off completely and now lay in a fuchsia heap next to mint green shards. I left the pieces right where they fell.

I wasn’t particularly sentimental about that vase, even though it was one of the last remnants of the tchotchkes my mother kept. I knew why she liked it too. It was the rose to the front of it. She also kept a candle in it. A pretty, soft pink votive that complemented the colours of the vase. I suppose that made the vase a candle holder more than anything else.

I remember Christmas after Christmas, giving the vase a little wipe…the candle too and putting them back on the shelf with all her other keepsakes.

However, the candle remained unlit. While she had it and then when it remained in the things I kept. All these years, I promised myself I would light it someday. Today it rests on its side in the middle of mint green shards.

The vase broke today and I am going to have to clean it up. It is funny though, how one thing leads to another. The sound of that vase shattering on the floor sparked a memory.

Most families have their own unique way of celebrating special moments with those they hold dear. For me, as a child, one the best parts about Christmas besides all the lovely presents of course was all the preparations that lead up to the big Day.

My mother loved everything about Christmas, and she put a lot of effort into the preparations, from the cleaning to the food to the “putting away the house” for the actual day. Our house would look like a hurricane passed through well into the wee hours of Christmas Day.

The last thing to be done after she had everything “just so” was the Hanging Of The Curtains…the pièce de résistance of all her hard work, which she would have sewn herself.

Well into adulthood, the presents and spending time with family in a house that smelled yummily like freshly baked bread and ham with a hint of pinesol seemed like the best reward for the hours of back-breaking, finger-wrinkling cleaning, wiping, mopping and any other chore my mother deemed necessary.

We would have washed, cobwebbed, swept and polished until everything had a shine unrivaled by anything the North Pole could conjure.

Christmas Eve 2010, four months after my mother died, I was at a bar with my sister and a couple close friends who had lost their mother the previous year. There we were with no real rush to get home…on Christmas Eve.

The rest of the world was hustling and bustling to get last-minute presents, making hasty trips to the grocery, the air itself tingling with the excitement and energy. There we were, grieving into our beers.

For the first time in all my life I had absolutely no reason to rush home on Christmas Eve. There was no cleaning to be done…there was no one to do it for.

Since then, I have avoided doing anything ‘sentimental’ for Christmas. Yes, I buy presents and last year I managed to fix brunch for the Sibs and their spouses. But I haven’t had the actual spirit, that familiar excitement that comes with all the preparations.

I don’t know what it was about the vase breaking this morning or the candle that remained unlit inside it, but it was almost as if I woke up. This was some pretty heavy stuff to be contemplating first thing in the morning…without having had coffee.

Thing is, the vase and the pink, unlit candle were just reminders of her, things I kept. Yet, today they reminded me of how happy Christmas made her, of how getting things ready for the Day was a big production for her and how happy I used to be…because I was part of making it happen.

The vase falling and shattering this morning was just a breaking with the past; a putting to rest of mint green vases that held unlit candles.

I will clean it up later.

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