My mother died ten years ago, on the 18th of this month, four months short of her 87th birthday. She slipped away from us in the early morning on the day before my sister’s birthday.
I miss my mother and I know that’s not unusual. I know people whose mother has been dead 20, 30, 40 years longer than mine, and they periodically repeat the same thing. “I miss my mom.”
It’s been said that time heals all wounds, but the wound left in the heart when a mother dies never heals. It’s always there, oozing like a sore that doesn’t form a scab. I don’t think that anyone who loved and lost their mom (or dad) ever fully recovers. But we go on. Life goes on. We get through the loss, but we don’t get over it.
Sometimes, I imagine that my mother is still with us. When she was alive, we often spoke on the phone two or three times a day. After she died, when I called the phone company to have them disconnect her number, the rep asked me if I would like to have that number. They would switch my current landline number for hers. I thought about it momentarily and then decided I didn’t want it, especially for sentimental reasons, because whenever I had to give it out to someone, memories would resurface.
As I was writing this post and wondering who inherited the phone number that my parents had for decades, I dialed the digits and prepared to say, “Sorry, I dialed the wrong number” to whoever answered. Instead, I was surprised to hear a recording, “The number you dialed is not in service.” For whatever reason, I took comfort knowing that the number remains unassigned even though it’s been ten years, or perhaps someone had it, and it got disconnected. Nevertheless, it isn’t operating.
I long to hear mother’s voice, her melodic laughter, and how she would usually address me using her nickname for me – Lo, or sometimes she’d jazz it up, “Hey, Lo-Mo.”
When she was alive, people often said that we looked more like sisters than mother and daughter. I didn’t see the resemblance then, but now, sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I see my mother in the reflection. She is me, and I am her.
My mom and I did not have a perfect relationship; occasionally, we had disagreements. Sometimes, our differences of opinion angered both of us so much that we would stop talking to each other for days. I remember that our most prolonged silent treatment lasted about two weeks. But discrepancies aside, our good times outnumbered the bad. We enjoyed many shared activities, especially battling on the Scrabble board or playing bid whist with other family members.
Some decades ago, shortly after my then-husband and I had our first child, my mother came to our home to assist me with caring for our newborn. I have the cutest, treasured photo of them that I took one day while watching her tenderly bathe my son. He is looking up at mom, eyes open wide, studying her face intently like a detective studies a crime scene. As I captured the Kodak moment, I thought my son must have been saying to himself, “She looks like my mom, but I’m not sure that is her. No, this is not the same lady who bathed me yesterday. Who is this person?” Mom is smiling and looking down lovingly at her first grandchild as if to say, “Hey there, little man, I’m your grandmother.”
Over the years, my mother frequently talked to me about her father, my granddad. Although he died when she was very young, around 18 or 19, her love for him was apparent in our numerous conversations. As the eldest of my grandparents’ nine children, I suspect my mother remembered more about grandpa’s life than her younger siblings. She often reminisced about how hard her dad worked plowing their farmland. She remembered vividly the day he was kicked in the head by one of the family’s mules as he was shoeing the animal. With blood running down his face, he walked calmly into the farmhouse. Grandma cleaned and bandaged the wound, and grandpa returned to tending the farm. My mother also remembered her mom and siblings sitting attentively in the pews as her dad, a Baptist minister, delivered stirring sermons from the pulpit of local churches on Sunday mornings.
Mother told me two things about her childhood that impressed me more than anything else. One was that her dad baptized her in the mill pond. When I was a child, I saw the mill pond up close on a few occasions, but my Uncle Buddy was the first to take me there to go fishing, and in spite of my squeamishness, he taught me to bait the hook on the fishing rod (using live worms, ilk!!!). Although time might have caused a reimage, in my mind, I still see the mill pond as a scary, darkened lake with floating green slime surrounded by woodland. I remember enjoying the sound of birds but fearing the animals my imagination envisioned lurking near the pond and watching us: raccoons, bears, frogs, and snakes. Whenever mother would tell me about her baptism (she reiterated it a few times), I would wonder who would want to be dunked into that water where there was the possibility of being nibbled by fish or eels?
The other thing mother enjoyed talking about most was an event that occurred one night after her dad had been hospitalized for some time. She didn’t remember the reason for his hospitalization, just that he got sick, went to the hospital, and stayed there a while. Then, one wintery night, mother awoke around midnight and, feeling extremely cold, reached down to pull grandma’s handmade quilt, and the other covers up closer around her neck. Suddenly sensing a presence, she looked toward the foot of the bed and saw her dad standing there. Although the glow from the wood-burning stove against the wall behind him illuminated his silhouette in the otherwise pitch-black room, she said she could clearly see his face.
Her six-foot tall, handsome, muscular 44-year-old dad was wearing one of his Sunday go-to-meeting suits. Mother said that she felt confused 
in her grogginess and wondered how her dad could be there when he was supposed to be in the hospital. Then, she surmised that perhaps he had come home that evening after the family had gone to bed and was going throughout the house checking on the well-being of his wife and children.
Mother said that he was there for only a few seconds. She stared at him and thinks she might have said, “Daddy?” He smiled, slowly raised his hand to wave at her, and vanished. I once asked mother if she might have dreamt that event. She said she didn’t think so. It happened. Strangely, the following day, as the family was preparing to eat breakfast, they received a message from the hospital in Wilson, informing them that their family patriarch had died the previous evening. Mercy Hospital (formerly called the Wilson Hospital and Tubercular Home) was the only hospital that served the Black community of East Wilson, North Carolina, at that time.
A few years ago, when I began researching our family genealogy, I learned from my grandpa’s Death Certificate that his cause of death was pulmonary tuberculosis.
So many things remind me of my mother. Whenever I see poinsettias at Christmastime, I think of her because she once told me how beautiful she thought poinsettias were. Thereafter, for many Christmases, I sent her a large poinsettia. (Eventually, there came a time when she stopped celebrating Christmas and other so-called Pagan holidays. I still sent the flower.)
When I was a little girl, I would hear mother sometimes singing lines from Billie Holiday’s God Bless the Child while doing housework. If she were alive to read this, she’d tell you, “I tried to sing,” because mother didn’t believe she could carry a tune. Still, whenever I hear that song , regardless of the artist singing it, it reminds me of my mother.
I miss mother most when I want to tell her something or discuss a special occasion. There are so many family events that have occurred during the past decade that I’m sorry she missed, like the wedding of her first great-grandson. On the other hand, there are things that I’m glad she didn’t have to go through, like the COVID pandemic.
I’m dedicating this to my mama from her four children.
