The night that my husband left for basic training, I went out to my parents house for supper. I moped around, cried a little, but functioned.
Then I came home, and I got ready for bed. I started to slip beneath the covers only to realize in physical reality that his body would not be next to mine.
And I called my Mommy.
I called, even though it was well past the proper time to call anybody. And I cried. I sobbed, and I screamed and I hollered. “Mama, Mama…. I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. I want him. Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama….”
I think of that night so often now. I still need my Mommy. I still have so many nights when I just need to call her and scream, “Mama, Mama, Mama…”
Tonight, I deliberately watched the movie Two Weeks which chronicles the last two weeks in the life of the mother of four siblings. I rightly guessed that I would laugh as much as I would cry. I guessed that the film would approach the subject in a way that brought the quirky humanity of a family going through the dying process of one of it’s members together.
I suspected it would cause me to feel some things I haven’t allowed myself to feel in some time. And I was ok with that.
At the end of the film I broke into sobs. “MAMA MAMA MAMA MAMA MOMMMMMMMEEEEEEEE”
And as I did that I heard the echo of my 13 month old daughter who choruses “Mama, Mama, Mama,” as she goes throughout her day. Anytime she needs something, or hurts, or is scared, or wants to share a discovery with someone I hear those beautiful words and I love them.
I felt this visceral connection down to my core tonight, as I shouted that word over and over and over again. How tightly and intricately woven are the roles of one as a daughter, and one as a mother.
How is it that I pay attention to that so infrequently?
I long for my mother. I long for her arms. I long for an answer when I sob out her name, but all that comes in emptiness. All that ever will come for the rest of my life will be emptiness, and longing, and the blackness of her absense in my life.
And so I turned tonight instead to Jesus. And I begged him to hold me. And He did. And He is.
And tomorrow it won’t hurt any less. It never really stops hurting. But I’ve learned to find joy again, to be normal again, to be me–changed, wizened… But me. I’ll go back to that tomorrow.
For tonight, I just want my Mama. And I am in that. Christ is in that with me. And that will have to be enough.
