Happy Birthday Mimi: Traditions & Changes

This Thanksgiving it will have been four years since our mother’s passing. I’ve been recently writing a lot of posts remembering connections to some people I consider to have made an impression on me in my life, many thanks to my own mother’s connections. In writing about the moments, I started remembering more of these little moments, gathered over the past 50+ years. Remember them actually been a way to heal and really process loss. Reliving these moments can give you a little heartache or anxiety, but at the end of that heartache tunnel is a sense of resolve or peace. The last four years I have used social media to help me through my own grief process and even our family blog. I’ve been very open on this blog about how my mother’s passing on turkey day has really left me with a lot of unresolved issues with the holiday based on her absence. But there are those holidays or even traditions that continue on.

Today, marks Linda’s 79th year. She may not be present for all celebrations and new moments, instead we keep her presence with memories and photos. While Christmas was her favorite holiday, she loved Halloween in her own special way, namely for the traditions it brought with our family. From my brother’s Halloween Night celebration of trick-or-treaters, her favorite part, handing out the candy. To our annual trek to the pumpkin patch out on the California coast. While people disappear from the traditions, most often the tradition changes, rather than disappears.

In October 2023, I wasn’t not totally sold on the idea of returning to the Pumpkin farm we had started going to shortly after moving to the south bay. Somewhere we have photos of my father joining us along the coast to grab holiday pumpkins. While my father left us and the tradition in 2009, and likewise with my mother in 2022, the tradition lives on today. While it’s hard to process these repeat moment with an absence lingering in person or in the back of your mind, the tradition takes on a new form. Over the last 4 years we have skipped a holiday or tradition here and there. Namely at my request. While we might now be emotional on the outside, inside we are all struggling to some degree to heal, move forward, forget or even understand. Many say our loved one’s never leave us and I think that is more to the fact. We carry the good and bad with us through life. Reminders of moments we believe made us and the moments that are a constant reminder of what not to do, or simply we all have a low point we need to avoid in the future.

While my mother didn’t live a super long life, her birthdays were special moments we all tried to come together. Having her Birthday in October also meant double Mimi time through out the years. Growing up as a kid, while we never went to the coast for pumpkins, we kept it local and fun. I am glad we carried on that tradition for Mimi & Mika. The video is a little snippet of all the time we hit the patch with family, I remember in October of 2020, in the thick of COVID, Mimi was insistent that we all go to the patch for pumpkins. She had recently returned home from hospital/rehab, and was determined to experience normal again. Sadly she went back into the hospital a few months later, but was determined to return to the patch one more time in 2021. That would be Mimi’s last visit to the patch, and her last group photo in the patch.

This pumpkin holiday, we have one less regular at the patch. While I am determined to escape the now much dreaded turkey day celebration and pomp and circumstance. Halloween and the patch are traditions I can stomach. I do miss sitting out in front of our house with my mom, and cooking up either corned beef or now our new tradition of mostocolli which the twins have deemed bloody fingers. With P. now away on the east coast at college, the tradition has taken on a new change. While her school offers a family weekend in the month of October, I am not sure what new change will occur for this holiday or the patch outing. For this year, we visited her at school and headed out to a local patch in Rhode Island to enjoy our halloween tradition in a new way. We did hit our usual haunt on the coast, but again, it was different. We enjoyed the day, but the missing link in our chain, felt like a void. That void probably can be filled with change but for now, I just want to recognize this new reality for HK5, and learn how grow from here.

As we celebrate our loved ones who are now gone, during Día de los Muertos from 10/31 to 11/2. I enjoy sharing these moments and traditions, because it’s just carrying on their story and their memory, while filing their absence with happy memories. We are not exactly skipping Thanksgiving again this year, just choosing to relocate this time. I am still settled on the fact I do not enjoy Thanksgiving. It took my mother to pass, for me to admit to myself and others, I do not like pumpkin pie. If I am honest, I used to drown it in whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. While P was missing from pumpkins at the coast, I am happy we were able to celebrate the holiday with her. It’s going to be weird not having her present for all hollows eve.

For now you can view the video here! https://www.instagram.com/reel/DehyslkBvcq/?mdxt=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==