I went out for a run because I'm training for what originally was supposed to be a half marathon. However, due to lack of proper training and a nagging knee injury, I'm only training for a 10k now. Totally not the point, but let's just say I was out there getting it done. While I was out schlepping along, I was thinking that this time last year I was winding down my training for the Freedom's Run full marathon. Thoughts began to wander and I ended up thinking about the day after last year's marathon when I got the call that my mom had been found in her apartment after a fall.
That call and the ensuing week that followed left me reeling. I literally packed and hauled ass to New Jersey and spent the week either with my mom at the nursing home, at city hall cutting through bureaucratic bullshit or cleaning out her apartment. I was literally running on adrenaline and had little time to think about anything but making sure my mom was cared for, both at the time and for the future. She could no longer live on her own, so we needed to make sure her Medicaid application was complete and submitted so that she could remain at the nursing home which was providing her with amazing care.
While at her apartment, my brother and I boxed up all non-perishable foods and donated them to the little food bank her apartment building had. We bagged up most of her clothes and donated those to the mission or Goodwill. We got rid of a lot of stuff that didn't have sentimental meaning and kept more that did. And I cleaned out her linen closet.
Flash forward to last weekend. I was finished my run and ready to grab a shower. It had been a really busy week at Casa Snarkfest with little time for house cleaning or laundry, and so we were running low on towels in our linen closet. I reached the top of the closet, way in the back and found a towel that really didn't look familiar. But it was a towel and I was really smelly, so I brought it into the bathroom and started the shower. It was then that the Mack truck blazed through the bathroom and hit me at 80 mph.
I held that towel up to my face and breathed in the smell of my mom's apartment and I began to cry hard, ugly tears. I never liked the smell of that apartment. Technically, it wasn't the apartment, it was her whole floor that had a distinctive smell, a smell I hadn't taken in in a year, but one that brought me right back to her apartment, sitting in her living room with her watching the Phillies lose. Eating pizza with her. Listening to her coughing the awful, heartbreaking cough that COPD brings. And laughing. There was always so much joy and laughter with my mom. She was hilarious and had no filter. God I miss her. And until that moment in my bathroom I didn't realize just how much I missed that apartment and those memories.
I called my girls upstairs and told them to smell the towel and tell me the first thing that came to mind. Both looked at me like I had 6 heads but they did as I asked and both immediately said "MOM-MOM'S APARTMENT".
That towel is now in the hamper, ready to be washed. Part of me can't wait for it to be clean, but there's a little part of me, way down deep inside, that really hopes that smell doesn't get washed away. Maybe some day. But not yet.
