There is a day that sits in my mind and stews. A day I should have told my mom about many, many years ago and didn't. While I'm sure I was just being a teenager and wasn't really into all that mushy stuff and sure didn't want my siblings or friends to find out, I don't know why I never told her this as I grew up. Didn't think about it maybe? Didn't know what she would think? For whatever reason, this day has been in my head for YEARS.
I don't know the exact circumstances but I remember leaving the Sheriff's Office (where our home used to be before life got complicated). I was walking to school. Acid washed blue jeans and a white sweater with white tennis shoes. How funny that I remember that little tidbit, huh??? I had walked through the courtyard and was walking past the east door of the courthouse when I heard a noise. It was an all too familiar noise. One I had heard hundreds of times and would hear it hundreds more over the course of the next several years. It was the bell that hung on the front door to the Sheriff's Office.
I turned to see if I could see someone coming or going and I did. I saw a woman leaving the office. I could only see the back of her and she looked just like my mom. I called out to her "MOM!" I didn't know how I didn't see her at the office before I left and I also didn't know why she wouldn't tell me she would be there. What I did know though, and I can still feel the very feeling in my heart, was how much I needed her at that moment. I remember it being a heart-squeezing, soul-pulling yearn for my mom.
To this day, I can feel that memory, if that makes any sense. Just like that day, today it makes me tear up and I feel a dark, heavy feeling deep inside. The only way I can even come close to describing it is how Harry Potter feels when the death eaters come for his soul. If you haven't read/seen the Harry Potter books/movies, you won't know what I'm talking about. But for those of you smart friends out there that have.......you get it.
I don't know why I needed her at that moment but I did. I could have been having teenage drama; maybe I was mad at one of my siblings; maybe I just didn't want to go to school that day. I don't know but I know that I will never forgot how I felt inside that morning. Isn't that funny how we can remember a feeling yet the purpose doesn't stay with us?
I didn't live with mom and dad at this point so it had to have been my junior or senior year. I lived here and there between my brothers and sisters; showing them what it was like to have a jerk live with them; someone who was miserable inside and shared it with everyone else. Mom and dad had moved an hour away to take care of my grandparents so I didn't see them very much.
Turns out it wasn't even my mom. It was a lady I had known for years. I remember thinking to myself "Oh man that's not mom. I hope she didn't hear me." She didn't. Not sure how I would have handled that one. Possibly just turned and kept walking like it didn't happen. Give me a break, I was a teenager!
I don't know why I finally chose to share this short story with you but there it is. In all it's tiny little glory. I wish I had told mom about that day. I wish now, that way back then, I had told her how much she was needed and would always be needed; how much she was loved and would always be loved greatly; how much she truly meant to me and will always mean to me; long after she left this world.
Well mom, if you're up there looking for some light reading while you rock in your rocking chair, here you go. My heart is squeezing and my soul is pulling. And I will never forget the day that I thought I needed you the most. Turns out those days are called everyday's. <3
