Epilogue

I want you, Mommy. Where have you gone? It is two years since I've seen you.

Is that you there, that lady with the short dark hair? Will she turn to embrace me? No. Her own children consume her. Is that you online, editing my work with a sure and steady mind? No. Her mind attends to her own family. Is that you, taking up my children, to teach them as you loved to do? No. Her arms open to recieve her own grandchildren.

I struggle to find her, desperate to see some piece of her to comfort me, to thrill in my offspring, to laugh at my husband. Clever, critical, intelligent, detailed, ingenious. I cannot find her.

Who holds the memories of my childhood? They are lost. Of family occasions and traditions? In imperfection I struggle to uphold them. She who knew dates and hows and whos... she is missing. She is not with my Dad. She is not here. She is not, but in my heart.

My hands remember her instruction as I peel potatoes. My ears recall her voice. My mind replays memories my eyes will never see. My skin yearns for her soft, cool hands, sometimes gentle, sometimes firm, but always hers.

To whom can I ask those questions only my mother can answer? They hide in my heart, unasked, like lost children in the shadows of desolate buildings. They don't know where to go. They hunger for knowledge, but starve.

"Are you my Mama?" I cry to the women who pass. No. They shake their heads. Their eyes fill with fleeting pity. A rememberance of their own loss, or perhaps a recognition of what will come.

The faces, the hands, the embraces are not hers; will never be hers. Lost, the woman who, with the complete knowledge of one who nursed, weaned and reared another, gave unshakable love, honest friendship, and immovable acceptance.

I grasp desperately for the bough from the tree that seeded me, but it has been hewn. The boughs of my beloved shade tree have been carted away to be burned. Ashes. I sift through the ashes. The wind lifts them away... voice, touch, laughter, opinion. Gone...

So I weep.