May 8, 2022- The answering machine greeted me, both times, yesterday. There was thus no direct conversation between us-and I can hear a couple of people in my life saying: “Why only twice? Why didn’t you keep trying?” They don’t know my Mom. She was either out with family or friends, or was asleep from having been out with family and friends.

Keeping up appearances has never been her style. She honours each of us, three sons and a daughter, as grown men and woman, yet there is always the sense that we are still her babies. She has always greeted me, on my actual visits, or when we do connect by phone, as if I just came back from an errand around the corner. That’s because there is no separation in spirit.

Mom has been ever present, throughout the lives of each of us, and of our children-and my siblings’ grandchildren. I hold out hope that she will live to see my own grandchild(ren)-all in due time. There certainly has been no more powerful force in any of our lives than that of her love. The greatest proof of this was the love and energy she poured into the well-being of my late youngest brother. At no time did she, or my father, forsake that beleaguered soul, and he taught each of us how to love, in return.

When I next see Mom, in late June or early July, I have a sense that she will have a few stories to tell about this Mother’s Day. May it be so, for a few years yet.