Dear Motherless on Mother's Day
Dear Motherless on Mother's Day,
Hi.
I know who you're thinking about today.
I know which stories you're trying desperately to scrape from the bottom of your memory. I know you're trying to remember the "good" moments, the ones that don't relate with the final moments--the last phone call, or the last goodbye, or the final breath. You've already relived those a hundred times. A thousand. Maybe a million. Who really knows, right? Because it seems like yesterday since she's been gone, and just as equally, it seems like a hundred years.
And it won't ever matter how old you are, or how long she's been gone. You miss her. You love her. She's as much a part of you now as when she was still here. You still think about things to tell her, and when you reluctantly remember that's she's been gone for years, you still feel that familiar tightening in your stomach.
Don't get me wrong, fathers are important; father's are a lifeline, a rock in our lives. But I say this as a father: mom was the one that always had the answers we wanted to hear. Mom was always ready to pull you close and hold on when things got rough.
And today, things are rough, and it puts all your grief beneath a microscope.
I don't know that I have an answer for you. I don't know that I have a cup of hope to lend. After almost two decades, I've only now begun to understand how sad this all becomes. It's not a sprint to a finish line, you don't get to feel better about today. That knot in your stomach won't magically unravel if you say the right words.
In the department store, when I was five or so, my favorite thing to do was to hide in the circular racks of clothing and wait for my mom to find me. Her hand would reach between the hanging clothes, and she'd touch my shoulder or my face and say that she'd caught me. I always laughed hysterically at my game of hide and seek, and would play until we left the store, moving from rack to rack to rack.
And today, I feel like that child again. I feel like I'm waiting for her long and lithe fingers to slip from out of the void, to touch my face, to split the darkness as if I were a child again, and find me sitting here.
But for better or for worse, my brothers and sisters, we are the sons and daughters that have been left behind. For years, I've had dreams of her; dreams of her hugging me close and telling me that her death was all a misunderstanding. That it wasn't true. And each time, I'd wake and find my arms outstretched, just like that little boy thirty years hence, that spent his days sitting in darkness waiting to be found.
I think it's time we spent some time doing a bit of seeking of our own. I don't know that we need to find happiness in what we've lost. I don't know that there's meaning to be gained. But there can be happiness in knowing who our mothers were. There's a beauty to loving someone as unconditionally as we have. There's a certain beauty in understanding what we've lost.
Mom would have hoped for nothing but happiness in our lives; today, that might not be possible--but perhaps we can strive to remember the meaning of her hope, and maybe that'll be enough.
Have a lovely mother's day, to all of you, my fellow motherless companions. You're doing just fine.