Mothers - How We Miss Them

When I wrote recently about Fear and Grief and Fearing the Worst - it set my mind to wondering about some of our friends. Everyone I know has experienced loss and sadness in their life. (Well, you'll see by the very next sentence that's a bit of a contradiction). I have 2 friends who have suffered nothing. Neither one of them has had to cope with loss, fear, major illness, grief. Even though they are well over 60 years old they still have parents. Their children have grown up happy, confident, secure and found partners; married and are now raising the next generation. Both families have been incredibly blessed.

Good Friends for Good Times. Not people I choose to be around when I feel cocooned and trapped in a glass bubble of grief. They neither of them understand what it is like. I sometimes wonder how hard an experience it will be when they do, eventually have it thrust upon them.

It's the natural order of life to lose parents first. I lost my mother when I was 16. I still miss her. I'm still taken by surprise when I talk to women older than I and discover they still have their mother. I remember an old lady of 80 telling me she was "now an orphan" when her mother had just died. She was not quite as I imagine an orphan - but I know how she felt.