Mothers Wisdom; Daughters Suffering

  It's been one year ago today since her husband died, but to her, it feel like another lifetime. She had dreaded the day of the anniversary of his death, but no one warned her it had been this hard. Suddenly her mind flashed back to a time when she was no older than seven, and she was going to have to get a shot. She bawled and bawled, until her mother became fed-up. The often warm hearted mother just turned her head towards her daughter, understanding her fear. As a child we do not understand that the pain from a shot only lasts a mere second, but no parent wants to see a beloved child in pain. So her mother in a very soft voice told her daughter, "save you're tears for a time when you need them more than now." If only her mother could've warned her what those tears would be for.



  The woman is sitting on a park bench, quietly tossing some bird seed at the demanding pigeons surrounding her. Perhaps she would spend the rest of her days doing this. One may wonder what a woman would do when they loose their husband of fifty-two years. Only I believe that no one knows exactly what to do, except continue on with life. For why would one who has passed want you to linger in the things they no longer abide in? In the activities they will never again do? Why on Earth waste another precious moment feeling one bit of pity for yourself, when someone else needs that ounce of pity more than you. Suddenly, a bird lands on the bench beside the woman, for a minute she stops to think, "could it be him, from the other side?" It only lasts a minute though, because she stopped letting herself think that way a long time ago.



  She carefully holds her hand out for the bird to eat from, a tactic her husband had taught, but before her hand was close enough for the bird to eat from, it flew away, forever lost in the millions of birds that roam the park by the hours, and there on the park bench, the womans weeps. All the tears that she had forced herself not to cry, the ones that had been acculating in her system, all just came out at once. She sat there for many hours, crying, recalling how all those years ago she had me her husband in that very spot. His favorite spot in the whole entire park. How only one year ago, at about nine-thirty how she scattered his ashes in that very spot. How the birds pecked at the ashes but left them alone as if they could sense the illness the man had suffered from.



  Now he was in a better place; away from the troubles of todays world.

  As the woman left, she looked to the sky, and said, "mom, now I know why I would need those tears..."