On Mothers Day

It was Mothers Day lunch, at Donna's house, a group of women, none really young. She spoke of her own mother, dead a long, long time, yet still a comforting presence, regularly giving advice and reassurance. Charlotte told of how when she was young, her Grandmother, dead just a few weeks, came to her in a dream to tell her how to find a family ring her own mother desperately wanted. I thought of my mother, gone for seventeen years—can it possibly be seventeen? She was born in 1911 so this July, she would have been 99. She doesn't talk to me or come in my dreams. I wish she would but perhaps it is I who blocks the gate. Maybe I don't let her come. Possibly, I haven't wanted to hear what she would say.
She died old, ill and shriveled, husband and son gone before, taking something of her essence with them but I could still make her laugh. Aphasia troubled her: when words refused to be found and meaning got lost we would take a long elliptical word-journey together, laughing at this absurdity of talking around and around a mystery thought before we could swoop down like a crow to peck the right word out of the dusty jumble of references to things remembered, people long gone, dogs, cars, clothes and scents. Triumph! A right word pulled the meaning together and Mother knew what she meant: she wasn't actually lost. It was just that expressing herself had become tangled and elusive but when I could help her, it was a pleasure. Together we wandered through her life, remembering and revisiting. Today I find want to look forward but I didn't mind that then and I seldom felt stifled by looking back. Perhaps I knew that soon enough, the need would be gone and this was something I could do for her. Her memories, or my version of them, are now mine. They are what I have left but I think I'm ready to hear what she has to say. I hope she comes.

Thanks, Donna and Charlotte.