Month: May 2005

Dear Mom, My first Mother’s Day without you. It’s been 6 months of “firsts,” none of them good. I turned 40 feeling more lost than ever because you were supposed to be here to help celebrate that milestone. Your leaving wasn’t in my plan. There’s still so much I want to share with you, so many things I would have told you had I known that I’d never see you again when I left you standing on the sidewalk last August. My stomach lurches when I pass a display of Mother’s Day cards. I have no verses to give you, but I have a well-worn, faded magazine clipping you sent me decades ago. It’s a poem called “Only Violets,” and upon reading it all those years ago, I finally realized that you were more than my mom. You were a woman whose dreams and wishes went unfulfilled, despite the fact that you weren’t asking for much. Only violets. Had I known you were...