My mother was an extraordinary human. Her faith in her fellow man and her unceasing insistence on seeing the good, even in the worst of people and during the worst of times, never left her. She desired to find the good in all that surrounded her, even when there was no ascertainable good to be found. Hers was a gift that I, her youngest child, do not share.
Whether I had it once and have had it drained from me by life itself or never was imbued with it, I know not. At this point in the dance, the back half of my sixth decade, it matters not.
Whether it is the weather or something non-meteorological, my mood has been something decidedly south of upbeat these past several weeks. Better said, it has been more decidedly south of upbeat than usual. To borrow a line from the Poet Laureate of Freehold, at my most ebullient, “I ain’t nobody’s bargain.”
Yesterday morning, I hustled off to the office before sunrise as usual, wallowing in the self-pity associated with the feeling of watching something significant slip further and further out of reach, and expecting it to be even more so by day’s end. But then, something decidedly unexpected happened. The situation became not more desperate but less so, although just how much less desperate remains to be seen.
Today marks sixty-nine months to the day since Mom died. Even slightly less than six years since she left this world, her magic is still very much in it. And now, as always, she has shared it with me even though my right to benefit from it is now, as always, debatable at best.
-AK
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