Mother's Daze - Day 3

On the front page of the St. Pete Times today was a story about a family who recently lost their mother. Being Mother’s Day it was an appropriate remembrance and stirred my own memories of Mother’s Day and the Times. When I was 10 years old, there was a short blurb in the paper about my father and I. The year before, my mother died of ovarian cancer – I was only 9. To grab more readers and add a human-interest spin, the paper chose us to write a story about since it was my first Mom’s Day without mom.

I was excited, still unsure about this whole death thing. My mother had been ill for more than a year and I had gotten used to her not being around. It truly hadn’t sunk in yet that I would never see her in the flesh again. The photographer and writer came to the house and my father and I were to re-enact an evening of making dinner. For the story there were vegetables involved, when in reality it was spam and noodles or some other concoction.

They mainly spoke to my dad since what would a 10-year-old have to say about such a loss. It wasn’t real and my vocabulary and emotional-expression experience was limited.



No so many years later, I still feel at a loss and words don’t escape me. Sometimes I feel like I never had a mother. I can envision her through pictures and the odd story, but I can’t identify with this woman. I love her, every day I think of her, but it is like loving a saint or an angel, nothing tangible, but you know they exist to protect you.

This Mother’s Day there was a gray cloud over it all. I functioned gardening, cooking and just being, but I knew there was something missing. No cards to remember, no flowers to forget, no calls to make or the lame excuse for a missed call. But don’t feel sorry for me. I believe that I am actually a bit blessed. My mother can do no wrong; she can’t get drunk at a party and embarrass me, she can’t follow some charlatan into belief oblivion and she can’t get angry when I care too much or too little. She is always with me and I can speak to her any time I want. I am lucky for those 9 years because it gave me the backbone I have now.


I wish all of you mothers out there a happy Mother’s Day. Especially my own mother, Marie.