Mommy

MANY attest to the phenomenon that when a soldier, mortally wounded in the battlefield, is in the throes of death, he calls for his mother. When a child whimpers in pain, almost always he or she will cry out to his or her mother. There are, to be sure, dysfunctional families and mothers who should never have been but, largely, the human experience of a mother has been such the ever-ready consoler in affliction.

I miss my mother and although it has been two years now since she left — in my brother’s words “without fanfare,” quietly in her sleep, without bidding anyone of us goodbye nor giving us a chance to tell her how much she mattered to us — I find myself calling for Mommy ever so often, desiring so earnestly to embrace her more tightly than I ever did while she was still around.