On Mothers…
Normally, the posts on the website are reserved for a chance to review the previous days work, and discuss the ongoing short story that I’m working on. It’s a great opportunity to share what my thoughts are as I continue the creative process and advance the story. Then, I follow with roughly fifteen hundred words of the story I’m writing. I really love that time, but today I have to set that aside to talk about something even more important.
That something is my Mother.
An unusual move, I know. None of you really know her, so I’ll do my best to acquaint you. My mother had a heck of a time raising me. I was always a terribly difficult child to get to do anything, easily bored, and more interested in reading whatever book I was into that day than listen to her try to parent me. I wasn’t the best kid in school, and she did everything short of raise the dead to get me to keep at it. She is a tiny woman, barely 4′ 10”, but she has the heart of a lion. She has loved our family with every breath she can muster, and I’m proud of how well I’ve turned out. It’s a huge testament to her hard work and her ceaseless love for me.
But why this, you ask? My mother started early with child-rearing. I’m getting ready to turn 32 here in a few months, I’m the middle child, and she isn’t even 53 yet. Early start. And… she’s dying. No amount of science or medical advancements can save her. Her condition is such that there is no cure. Her disease cannot be stopped, cannot be halted, and cannot be reversed. Each step it takes forward is one she cannot push back, and the condition has only one outcome. I have… six months? If that? Maybe I get a little lucky and get a whole year, but it could just as easily be tomorrow. She’s a warrior, a fierce Irish girl complete with red hair, so she isn’t going down without a fight. In the end though, all of her fighting won’t stave off the inevitable.
I write that not to ask for pity, but to offer up a part of my life in the hopes that it helps another. That’s the entire reason I began writing, the whole purpose of my new direction in life. I wish to spend the precious coin of my existence giving to others. If discussing my own personal pain helps another, then I will do it. You see, I thought I had more time with her. I thought I had years and years and years. I thought she would get to see my writing career turn the corner, and join me as I travel around the country to various conventions and book signings. My son isn’t even going to remember her as he grows up. I’m never gonna get to show her a copy of my first published book. She won’t get to meet my second child at all, or watch my son go to school. I wanted so bad to have all those things with her, and no force on Earth or in whatever lies beyond can give them to me.
It hurts so very much, that knowledge. It sears into my mind, filling me with doubt and pain for all the times I wronged her. All the times that I wasn’t there. I want so desperately to make it not true, to rewrite this part of our lives so that I could have more time. But I can’t. I can’t and it is tearing me apart. I can’t ever have those things, and I see it when she looks at me. She wants them every bit as much as I do, and all I see is how scared she is. And how much she hurts. God it tears me apart, I can hardly stand the pain I see in that face that has loved me so through so much. I would give anything to take that fear away.
I can’t. There’s nothing to fix, and all I can do is cherish the rest of the time we have together. All I can do is hold my son and show him how much he is loved. All I can do is keep writing, as it has made my mother so proud to see me value myself as much as she always has. All I can do is try to help my father and my siblings brace for the inevitable, and try to hold us all together when the axe finally falls. All I can do is live my life to the fullest, as that’s what she always wanted for me.
All I can do doesn’t feel like enough, but that’s what makes love so wonderful. We are all of us imperfect in our own ways, yet we can still love someone with all our hearts despite that knowledge. My mother has always loved me, despite my quirks and foibles. She would never think less of me for my failings, and cheers loudest for my successes. I owe it to her to continue. I owe it to the love that has never stopped from the moment I was conceived. I owe it to the woman who saw greatness in me when I saw none. I owe it to the tiny spitfire of a mother who refused to back down to me, even though she never felt she was half as smart as I. I love that woman, and I wanted to take this time to share her with you, because I know you will too.
Love you Mom,
Your Son.
