Dear Mama Shellie, 3-24-25

Shellie's Shellacking, and the unexpected poignancy of strawberry cream cheese

I’m missing you bad today, mom.

Yesterday was a nice, calm Sunday. I woke up and played a lot of brain games—in part because I’m 44 and you started losing your memory in your late 40’s of course—but mostly because I’m possibly a bit addicted to them and think they’re really fun.

After a short run on my crappy treadmill and before I hopped in the shower, I sat on the bathmat and meditated and thought of you—the way you came to me in a dream last December and started to slather your love on the wounded parts of my heart as I fitfully slept during probably the truest, darkest, most horrifying dark nights of the soul I’ve ever experienced. I remembered how when I woke up the phrase “Shellie’s Shellacking” was repeating in my mind over and over (as it had all through the night) and how I could actually feel the ways your palpable, real love had truly healed me overnight. And then throughout the next day as I went Christmas shopping with Carlos, anytime the horrible stuff came into my mind, I was able to invite you in and you “shellacked” my heart with your love again and again, and I was actually healed by this.

I’ve never experienced anything like it. My quality of life has been different since that day. It was real—this balm of love that healed my heart. It was as real as anything.

Yesterday, I invited you in again for some “shellacking”. It was time to usher in, again, the binding up of horrifying wounds that, unattended to, erode my continuity of existence. And you came in easily and soothed my heart as you have anytime I have summoned you since that day.

I felt you so close. It was lovely.

I was expecting that to be all.

But you haven’t left my side since that moment. And I’ve been weeping intermittently for the last 18 hours.

It hit hardest at the most random moment,