Mother’s Day and it is only me now. I’m the mother left standing in the lineage of both my husband and I. No cards to get in the mail, no flowers to send, no phone calls to make. I wouldn’t say I made much of a big deal about Mothers’ Day when I was a daughter of a living mother. I did sometimes send flowers but more often I’d send them for her birthday than Mother’s Day. And living over 600 miles away, I never made the trek for Mother’s Day. But I did call her and wish her a Happy Mother’s Day — that I wouldn’t miss. For what it was worth.
But her final Mother’s Day, the one just two years ago, I was there for that one, along with my four siblings. She was in the hospital then and so very near the end. It was a terrible day and a beautiful day.
I brought her a Mother’s Day Card that morning, but no gift, because what would be the point, she wasn’t eating or drinking by then. I’d bought the card in the hospital gift shop because all we did in those end days was go from the hospital to her apartment to sleep — in alternating shifts. So I stopped in the gift shop and bought her a card and I cried when I read it to her. She couldn’t even read by the end, my mother the endless reader, my mother who always had a book open on her bedside table and another on her chair side table in the living room and another one near the end of the couch. She…
