Everyone who knows me well knows that I used to speak to my mother nearly every day.

Even when I was living in New York in the late 1990s, we always made time to catch up, if not every day, then every other day.

After she passed in October of last year, it’s been really hard to fill those 30 minutes we would spend on the phone.

This is the time of year that she would be telling me about the Oscars, one of her favorite events of the year.

She would watch nearly all the films in competition and handicap them with her friends. And then on Oscars night, she would cook dinner and host a watch party for a friend (usually Marie; I would provide the wine).

It was a sine qua non day in her calendar.

There’s a great line from the song Gram Parsons wrote for his mother, “Brass Buttons”: “And the sun gets up without her/doesn’t know she’s gone.”

That’s how I’m feeling today knowing that I can’t call Judy and ask her who her favorites-to-win are. And she won’t be drinking that bottle of Etna white that I left her in her fridge.

Tracie, the girls, and I will watch the red carpet tonight. It’s the first year of the Oscars without Judy. I miss her so much.