Mother’s Day
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content
Category: Life
It’s my turn to blog at The Seven Wicked Writers Today and here is what I wrote:
It’s Mother’s Day again, my least favorite ‘holiday’ of the year. It’s a terrible reminder that I don’t have a mother. I lost her when I was six to the ravages of colon cancer. This time last year, I blogged about my favorite memory of her, which was waking up in the middle of the night to find her tending to a beaten and raped trasnvestite my father rescued on his taxi-driving night shift . I will forever remember her kindness to this stranger. It is my most cherished memory of her because she died soon after.
In the past week, my publisher and friend Tina Haveman lost her mother and the funeral was on Friday. Today will be brutal for her, I am sure.
For those of us without mothers, whether we lose them early or late– I don’t know which is worse to be honest–but either way, it’s hard. Having a mother is something many people I know take for granted. Tina did not. She visited her mother every single day, which always impressed me. I knew she’d visit her in the evenings and around 7pm each day this week, I’ve thought about Tina and how the evenings must be surreal not going to visit her mom.
Tina made a comment to me this week that some people take their mothers for granted or don’t speak to them at all because some mothers just aren’t good mothers. I know this is true. But I wish for just one hour, I could spend some time with my mum and ask her questions, just normal questions about her favorite music, her favorite flowers…
A few weeks ago, on the anniversary of her death, I asked my father to remember just one thing about my mother that he hasn’t blocked from memory. At 83, her passing still grieves him and it took me a long time to realize that. He told me a sweet story, that she used to go into the back yard of our Bondi Beach apartment every morning and examine her roses. He said she would talk to the spiders who’d taken up residence, asking them not to stay there anymore.
I laughed, because I have always hated killing bugs, even spiders. He told me butterflies followed her down the street and I believe that.
So of you have a mother, and she’s a good mother and she deserves it, please give her an extra, hard hug today, for those of us who don’t have one. And may butterflies follow you both home.
Aloha oe,
A.J.
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