"I am not taking your husband's place"

The dining room table today.

Diary of a vacation with my mom: Day 1, August 22 

“I am not taking your husband’s place.” I remember saying those words to my mom last year, and lately they've been ringing in my ears.

It was a few days after my dad died. My brother had gone back to Toronto after the funeral, and I was staying on for a few more days. My mom and I were about to sit down for dinner.

The dining table at my parents’ house is eternally cluttered. On a typical day you might find three days’ worth of newspapers, a tin full of cookies, a silver tea pot, dozens of letters from charities asking for money, an arrangement of flowers long past their best before date, the program for a concert, a jar of homemade red currant jelly, and the paper napkins saved from yesterday’s meal because they aren’t all that dirty yet – and all of that that would just be covering one corner.

From this miasma I had cleared two places for my mom and I to eat, and set out cutlery and glasses. I was pouring the wine when Mom brought in the frozen spinach pizza she’d heated for us.

She looked at the places I’d set out.

“Well you don’t have to sit at the end anymore,” she said, her tone suggesting the spot I’d chosen was obviously undesirable. She pointed to the place across from her. “You can sit over there now.”

I looked where she was pointing and said, “I am not taking your husband’s place.”

The words hung in the air, both of us realizing the deeper meaning my words unintentionally carried.

Then my mom put the pizza down and we didn’t say anything more about it.

I’ve thought about that moment many times. Because the reality is, over the past year I have taken her husband’s place, in more ways than one. When I’m in Ottawa I drive her around as he did, I sit beside her at church, and I pour the wine when we sit down for dinner.

Each time I feel like there’s an awkward a process of adaptation underway as we figure out together how to feel like mother and daughter together, instead of not-husband and not-wife. 

Today our journey into his territory will go one step further. Because today I become my mother’s travel companion.

The tour starts with three days in Prague and then we cruise down the Danube through Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. We fly out today, and for the next two weeks we’ll be together constantly, sharing a room.

As I sit in my old bedroom, contemplating the map of where we're heading, and listening to my mother puttering downstairs with her last minute packing, I worry that I’ll be so preoccupied about her health and happiness that I won’t remember to have a good time on this trip.

While we’re on fantastic trip, will I be able to remember I’m not just doing this to take her husband’s place? Can we just be two women, travelling together, seeing the world and enjoying each other’s company? I’m about to find out.