A Motherless Mother's Day

A Motherless Mother’s Day
When I lost my mother a friend welcomed me to the “club”. I felt a little uncomfortable being told that I was in a “club”. To me clubs were fun. There was nothing “fun” about being motherless. All too soon I found out what she meant by being a member of a club. No one but another “club member” knows what it feels like when you realize you don’t have parents, you have a parent. You now go to your dad’s house, not your parents’ home. Your friends talk about their parents and you don’t have anything to add to the conversation, or they apology and change the subject. You feel like a helium balloon that escaped the security of a warm hand holding you in place. You float aimlessly.
I drifted the first couple of months. I found alcohol my best friend. I found the voices of angels in every sip. The voices would tell me this isn’t the answer. I told them to shut up. I wanted my liquor and one night dates. I didn’t want a commitment because then you have to care and when you care you lose the person to death. I didn’t want that again. My mother would come to me and tell me this isn’t the way she wants to be remembered. I convinced myself that it was all in my mind and not her.
The holidays came and I walked through them. I would listen to friends talk about hating family and I would just go into the bathroom and cry. They say the person you kiss at midnight on New Year’s Eve is the person you spend the year with-I kissed a picture of my mother.
May brought the knife in my heart – Mother’s Day. I am convinced that Hallmark is owned by Satan itself. Being reminded you are single on Valentine isn’t kind, but Hallmark has a “To My Single Friend On Valentine’s Day” card. So, now it’s a month long reminder that I am motherless. I want to remember MY mother and how she believed “Every day is mother’s day- where’s my present?”
I find myself frozen, crying in the Hallmark store at New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal .I’m so over-whelmed by all this Mother’s Day stuff and I have no one to buy it for. This little oriental store owner comes smiling over to me and tells me that I am upsetting the other customers by standing in the doorway crying, and my tears are staining the stuffed Bugs Bunny’s.
I end up in the Macdonald’s and order a hamburger and shake. I hate eating alone so I try and find a corner and eat so no one can see that I am eating alone, I sit in the corner and notice a mother and father and small boy. The small boy, about 8 years old, is helping his mother sit. She is heavy and is having trouble adjusting in her seat and her loving son is helping. I become that loving son and I remember helping my mother and I start to cry. I don’t want people to see me crying, but they are staring at me. I can’t slip out of the Macdonald’s because I placed myself in a corner so no one would notice me and now EVERYONE is noticing me! Then I see them all looking at their food and I catch a reflection of myself in the window and see that hamburger meat is hanging out of my mouth. Everyone is wondering if I am crying because my hamburger is bad. I just want this mother who has a loving son helping her to hug me. I want to feel a mother’s hug. I get out of my seat and start to walk over and as I do I over hear her say to her husband, “we have to get out of the city- all these sicko’s are taking over.”
I start to laugh- that’s what my mother would have said. I take this as my mother’s way of letting me know she is fine.
A friend of mine lost his mother and I welcome him into the club. He reminds me that is mother was old and had a good life. He also felt free to travel now.
My mother was right about mother’s day, it is every day and she is missed every day. I’m still not sure if I want to attach my heart to someone , but it’s nice to know I have a heart to be attach