A Margarita and a Toast

The second to last picture I have of my mom was taken just a couple of weeks before she died.

She was in hospice care at that point, five and a half months into a four-to-six month prognosis, and we all knew where things were going. My brother spent a lot of time at her apartment in those last few months, with his family coming down to join him as they could, and we tried to get out there as often as we could manage as well. Between late August of that year, when we took Oliver back to college, and late October, when we cleared out my mom’s apartment, we put over 10,000 miles on the minivan. It was a long couple of months in a lot of ways.

This particular visit was in mid-September. There were a few of us there at the time, and we were just sort of hanging out and talking about not much of anything at all which is the best way to share time as a family, I think. I don’t remember exactly how the conversation turned to this particular topic but at some point my mom said that she’d really like a margarita.

And you know what? Why not. She’s in hospice. We’re not worried about any long-term health implications of anything. Hell, she could have asked for heroin at that point – what would it hurt? Get the lady a margarita. There were none of the component pieces of a margarita in the apartment, though, so I drove down to the nearby State Store (which is how you have to buy alcohol in Pennsylvania) and bought a bottle of margarita mix and a small bottle of tequila to go with it.

They were good margaritas, once we remembered to add ice.

I think we finished the mix that night, and I ended up custody of the tequila. It came home with me, when all was said and done.

We’re not teetotalers in my family but we’re not really much of a drinking bunch either and the little bottle of tequila sat in the closet with all the other alcohol for more than three years after that, biding its time. On our Pre-Tariff Stocking Up Mission a few weeks ago Kim and I discovered a lovely bottle of jalepeño margarita mix that turned out to be quite tasty.

We finished up the little bottle of tequila tonight.

It’s good to use things as they were intended. Food and drinks are meant to be consumed, after all. But you should not do this mindlessly. Sometimes you have to pause and remember.

Cheers to you, mom.