Todays Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul

[Guest guest]

The Club

By B. Townsend

The doctor cuts the umbilical cord at birth, but I believe it remains

an

invisible connection throughout the lives of both mother and child. In

utero,

the cord that joined my mother and me flowed with blood, rich in food and

oxygen. After birth, my mother provided me with emotional and spiritual

sustenance. When my mother died and our connection was severed by her

removal

from the physical world, I floundered. I felt displaced and disoriented.

There

are still times, years later, when I feel deprived and bewildered without

that

invisible cord in place to nurture and nourish me.

I recall the day my mother joined the club. I was eleven and had come

home

from school for lunch. That day, as with many days that preceded it, I had

been

followed home by two girls who teased and taunted me every step of the way.

I

was crying by the time I reached my door and I needed my mother. I rushed

blindly into the kitchen and fell into her arms, sobbing and trying

desperately

to tell her how hurt I was. I saw my father and wondered why he was home in

the

middle of the day. I then looked up into my mother's face and saw it

streaked

with tears and contorted with her own misery. I thought, Wow, she is really

upset about the teasing, too!

My father broke the silence and announced, " Your grandmother died this

morning. " Only after I joined the club years later did I begin to

comprehend

the wrench she was feeling that day at lunch. The cord to her mother had

been

cut, and she was struggling to breathe on her own for the first time.

I have heard that time heals all wounds. I do not believe this. The

person who has lost a limb never stops missing the arm or leg that is gone,

but

somehow time permits that person to cope eventually with the loss. The

cloud of

grief that isolates, suffocates and blinds us will lift.

I was a mother of two when my mother died. There have been three babie

s

born since, and sometimes the pain of not being able to share the smallest

and

most insignificant moments that I know she would understand paralyzes me

briefly, and I feel angry and cheated.

My mother is physically gone, but she still sustains me. A glance at

an

old photograph, the sight of her handwriting on a recipe card or the

remembrance

of a moment long ago can evoke a memory so powerful and vivid, I swear

sometimes

I can hear her calling my name. Her obvious presence in my five children

continues to inspire and motivate me even when I am tired, lonely and

scared.

One's meticulous attention to detail, another's smile and another's

unflagging

optimism resurrect her when I need her the most.

My mother has not left me, even though the cord has finally been cut,

and I

have joined the club I never knew existed.