and you always will

I opened the dish towel drawer for the sixth time, hoping the towels had somehow magically appeared.

The new towels weren’t there yet of course.

“What did mom do with them?” I wondered aloud.

She knew they had to be somewhere because she had given them to him for Christmas just a few months ago. Not that the towels were that terribly important. It’s just that when you’re expecting guests, you’d like everything to look good.

Well, maybe I wasn’t going to find them. On the other hand, the guests would not arrive until tomorrow. Plenty of time to worry about dish towels later.

On second thought, maybe I should forget about the towels altogether. My father’s niece and her husband didn’t seem like the kind of people who would storm off because her host hadn’t brought out new tea towels.

Whats Next?

Maybe I better see if I can get my hands on Mom’s best tablecloth. A tablecloth had always been one of the things my mother insisted on when we had guests over.

I went to the drawer where Mom kept the tablecloths, and sure enough, there it was.

But when I pulled out the hand-embroidered tablecloth, the one that had taken her months to complete, I gasped in dismay. Right in the middle was a big stain. Now how the heck did mommy’s best tablecloth end up with a stain?

Oh yes, that’s right. We had all been here for Christmas, and one of the kids had accidentally knocked over a glass of soda. Seeing her granddaughter crying with remorse had been more important than her tablecloth, and her mom had said that she was sure the pop would come out of it when she washed it.

Okay, so it looked like I’d have to forget about the tablecloth, too. Maybe I’d be better off attending to the important things right now, like vacuuming.

Satisfied that I was finally going to make some progress, I took out the vacuum.

Except. . .Why did it sound so funny? And why wasn’t he picking up those papers from the living room carpet?

I pulled out the accessory hose and flipped the switch again. Ah ha. That’s why. No suction. The hose was clogged.

Well, OF COURSE the hose was clogged. I couldn’t find the new kitchen towels. Mom’s best tablecloth had a big stain on it. Why wouldn’t the vacuum hose be clogged?

And right at that moment, I started to cry. Now what was he going to do? Would a wire hanger work? Thirty minutes later, however, the vacuum was still clogged.

Where was dad? He knew he was out and was probably lounging in his garden, since it was mid-April, but why wasn’t he here when I needed him? After being a farmer for 50 years, he could fix absolutely anything.

Just at that moment, my father entered the house.

“What happen?” she asked herself, noticing that she had been crying.

Even though it had been years since I called him “dad”, it just slipped out and along with that came more tears.

“Oh, Dad, I can’t find the new tea towels. The tablecloth has a big stain on it. The vacuum is clogged. And–“

I stopped and swallowed hard.

“I miss my mother”.

There. I had said it

And in that instant, the whole world seemed to stop as Daddy took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“I know you do,” he said. “Me too.”

You see, just three weeks earlier, my mother had been diagnosed with advanced gallbladder cancer. Mom died Saturday night, and this was Monday. My father’s niece and her husband would drive 275 miles to attend the funeral and would stay at the house.

As Dad looked at me, I noticed how much he seemed to have aged in the last few weeks. And her face was covered with a silver beard. It was a rare morning when my father didn’t shave, but the last couple of days had been far from normal.

“And you know what?” Dad continued. “You will always MISS your mother. In fact, she will never completely disappear. Not even when you are as old as me.”

Dad was 70 years old. I was 26. I never knew dad’s mother. She had died before I was born.

Mom had contracted polio in 1942 when she was 26 years old and was left paralyzed in both legs. At that time, the doctors had told her that she would never have any more children. I was born 16 years later.

After the funeral was over and my father’s relatives went home, I found the tea towels. Mom had put them in her dresser drawer. And after several washes, the stain on the tablecloth finally came out. Dad had also been able to fix the vacuum cleaner.

But nothing could fix the fact that my mother was gone.

Mom died in 1985, and all these years later, I realize that Dad was right: I will always miss her.

But I also found out what else that day in April was trying to tell me so long ago: that missing my mother keeps her alive in my heart.

********************