“Mommy”

There’s nothing like a mother’s love. That’s a saying that has been repeated probably more times than any other. But there’s also nothing like a child’s love for the mother.

Two days ago, my wife was having a nightmare, and she woke up…well, somebody did…saying, "Mommy! Where’s my Mommy?!"

I hate it when this happens, and it happens seemingly in shifts about once every year. It was a voice I didn’t know, but I knew it was a child. I told him that Mommy wasn’t here. I started to get up and go over there to him. He asked where Mommy was, and I told him that Mommy had to go be with God and be an Angel. 

Then, my heart tore into pieces as this child inside my wife started sobbing the most pitiful sobs. The hurt of my mother-in-law’s death…in 1992….just never seems to ease at all for my wife. I held the child in my arms and let him cry on my shoulder.

I’m crying as I write this, remembering the gut-wrenching emotion it brought up in each of us. I wish there was some way I could help everyone trapped inside that body to accept Mommy’s death and move on, but I guess that may never happen, so I’ll spend the rest of our life explaining to my wife that her mother is dead, and it will be fresh and new every time. That hurts. Terribly.

But it’s part of our life, and I know it. I accept it, since I have no other choice.