For A Friend

Yesterday, I received news from my dear friend P. that her mother had passed away. I knew that the last few weeks had been rough on my friend. When I spoke to P. last, she was dividing her time between her family in London and her elderly mother who had suddenly become quite sick in Germany and was in the hospital. She was wondering if she was making the right decisions for her loved one, how many medical interventions were too many and hoping that she would know when it was time to let go. I am not an expert, though having lost my mother myself to a long, drawn out illness four years ago may have endowed me with the necessary credentials to give advice.
I tried to encourage my friend, assured her that the decision she reaches is the right one. There are no wrong ones. Love will let you know what is best.
And when illness wins, no matter how old the daughter, she will feel like Little Orphan Annie. I did. I was 42 when my mother died. Instantly, I felt as I did when I was a child, realizing that I had lost my mother in a crowd. Utterly helpless, alone and panicked. Of course my mother always found me again, but this time she never came back for me. Never put her hand in mine again to say: " Don't stray from me"
One never gets over a mother's death, even as an adult. One merely grows up, our own mortality becomes reality rather than theory. I remember thinking that if death came to my invincible mother, it will happen to me. Not that I believed that I would live forever, but death seemed unreal, something that happens to others, until it took my mother.
I shared every significant moment, good or bad, with my mother. We spent hours on the phone, discussing every angle of a situation. During her illness and the months after her death, I sometimes instinctively reached for the phone to tell her : "You won't believe what is happening in my life right now. Do you have a minute? I need your advice" until I realized that she could not share this particular drama with me.
My thoughts are with my friend P. I know what she has just gone through. And what her loss represents.
Here is to our mothers. The world sure isn't the same without them... And here is to all of those Little Orphan Annies of all ages.


"A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts."
-Washington Irving