i miss my mom

I got an unexpected card today from my father. He sent me some photos of the family, taken when my youngest brother was getting ready to leave on a trip. The first picture I saw was my mother, standing next to youngest brother.

She looked so old. I was on the phone with the husband when I opened the card, and I stopped talking, lost track of the thread of our conversation, so shocked by the difference in her that I couldn't think of anything else.

I haven't seen her since my sister got married. Four years now. We talk on the phone all the time, and it's given me an illusion of being there with her, but, no, it's not the same. I remember her with hair dyed a light brown, a youthful face, a brilliant smile. The photo showed a woman who's stopped coloring hair that has gone mostly white. Her smile is a beautiful as ever, but the skin of her face is sagging, hanging a little too loosely over her cheeks and jawline. Deep grooves capture her mouth like parentheses. She looks ... old.

When her father died, I cried and cried, not so much for the loss of my grandfather (although I mourned for him) but for what it meant for the future. It was like the lives of her parents were supports, foundation stones keeping her alive. With Grandpa gone, Mom was somehow more vulnerable to death and that frightened me.

This photo has been a repeat of that realization. Being around my mother is like being around a warm fire on a cold day. I have supported her through her divorce, through the years before that. She has guided me and advised me, calmed me when I couldn't stop crying. She told me once that she can't count how many times I, or one of my sisters, has called her, only to start sobbing as we say, "Mom?"

She's Mom. When I little, it felt like I'd explode I loved her so much. I remember the force of that adoration, like a supernova inside me, streaming love like light from my eyes and mouth, my fingers, my skin. I see that same love now, in my daughters, in the way they follow me from room to room, touching me every so often.

I saw that picture and it brought all that into my mind in one painful flash, and I thought, "What am I doing, so far away from her while she grows old?" I saw a future where I see her only in strobe-like flashes, older and frailer with each blink, with me never getting to experience the times between, confined to slices of her life.

I miss my mother. I miss my sisters. I want to be with my family again, so badly. They're my best friends, and I'm so lonely for them tonight.