Missing

I am on my own tonight. Matt's had meetings all day and I am craving tuna casserole. As I search for my cookbook with the recipe in my handwriting I relize I've left it at Don and Cindy's, which means I must dive into the index card recipe collection that Mom had made for me shortly after Matt and were married. In the front is an email she sent me for her home-made pesto. I had asked for it for months, and finally she emailed it to me. It sits there, along with the entire box, waiting to be used again. And I can't bring myself to do it, even a year later, because it still hurts too much to see her handwriting and those "xoxo" 's on her email. It's at times like this, when I'm cooking and have to use her knowledge, her pieces of advice - especially in the kitchen - that it really truly hits me like a freight train, that she is gone, she's not coming back, and while I think I've accepted it, the fact of the matter is I only want her back because I desperately miss her.