“Is it hard?”
…
“Holidays without your mom?”
I was so startled by the question that I quickly blinked away. Inside, I begged him not to ask more. Even three years after her death, my mom’s face swam continuously in my thoughts: dancing gray eyes, thick black hair, deep brown skin, her lopsided smile waking me up every morning until that first one she missed. Every time I looked in the mirror I saw her reflected back at me.
So yeah, hard didn’t cover it. Hard was like describing a mountain as a lump, like describing the ocean as a puddle.
And neither of those things could contain my feelings about Christmas without her.”