Mom,This Hub's For You

The first father’s day after my Dad died I wrote a guest column for the local newspaper that was quite good, if I do say so myself. People who did not even know my father cried. My Mom was proud of it but has told me more that once she wants me to write one about her. She is not exactly shy.

So Mom, this hub’s for you:

The sun was shining in my eyes yesterday when Mom and the lady from church walked into the Chick-fil-et. From where I sat I could not see her clearly. But the way she was dressed, the thinning gray hair that is a side effect of the chemo, the way she held her head to compensate for her poor eyesight and the way she sort of shuffled toward the counter were enough for me to recognize her. Then, the sun was blocked by a car in the parking lot and I realized that the lady was not my Mom after all.

This realization should have made the preceding paragraph worthless. But it has had the opposite effect on me. Mom is in her early seventies and was diagnosed with stage four cancer for the second time about five years ago. They gave her six months to a year and yet she is still very much with us and fighting.

What I realized this afternoon was that one of these days this exact same thing will happen to me again -- with one major difference, Mom. You won’t be here.

So I hereby officially forgive you for not letting me go to the beach when I graduated from high school. It has been worth it to give you grief since 1969!

And, I was the one who accidentally set the chicken house on fire.

Also, I once put a dead bird into the pocket of a suit coat at Belk’s Department store. The explanation for that involves a bb gun, tremendous guilt and a sign on Arch Street coming into town that declared Lancaster a bird sanctuary.

Oh, by the way, I love you.