Momma's Boy

It's not any sort of special day, like her birthday or the anniversary of her death, but I've been thinking about my mom lately. Maybe because I recently saw the Real World episode where Danny buries his mother or maybe it's because my sister Candace sent me some pictures from the days of yore that featured my mother in all her pre-child birthing bliss? Maybe it's because I'm so detached from my family and friends? But really, does it matter why? Sometimes it's good to think about the dead. Perhaps it helps them not to have died in vain. If we don't think about them, their entire existence is kind of diminished. At least that's what I tell myself.





In looking at this picture, I see such promise in my young mother's eyes. She has no idea that she will go on from this wedding day to have 10 pregnancies and 6 children, or 2 marriages, or lots of days where making ends meet was an incredibly challenging task. You can see the anticipation in her face, or rather her fear. This childbride rides in the back seat next to her father on her way to what may turn out to be a mistake. The argument could be made that it was in fact a mistake considering my parents divorced within 4 years of this very photo, but mom would say it wasn't a mistake because she had me and my sister. When she used to tell me that very thing when she was alive, I always brushed it off as mom-sense, you know motherly nonsense. The kind of stuff that makes you say "aw, Ma" or "whatever Mom." But now that she is gone I'm kind of glad that she did occasionally tell me that she was happy to have me, even if being married to my father was "unbearable". Those little asides that made me cringe at times turned out to be the same things that I recall when I get a little reminiscent. I try to think about how I would be as a person if she never did tell me that she loved me or that she was proud of me. Would I be a completely empty and useless person now? The effect that our parents have on us, even from the grave, is pretty intense. I don't think that I would be so compassionate or caring if I didn't have a decent role model in my mother.

Now like I said, it's not Mother's day or anything like that. It's just that sometimes she shows up in my thoughts and I am alright with that.

I'm not gonna lie, I wish she was here.

And I know she wishes she was here.

But she isn't.

Or is she?