Twenty Years Later

An essay and poem reflecting on my mother

My parents as a young married couple.

---

Thanksgiving is always a somber holiday for me.

Many people look forward to Thanksgiving Day as an excuse to gorge on turkey or ham, ultimately sending themselves into a food coma while they binge watch NFL football games. I do not enjoy the holiday and I suppose I never will. For me, this week is an annual reminder of my mother’s absence from my life.

Mom lost her life on this day 20 years ago following a grueling two-year battle with cancer. Her death cast a shadow that lingers every late November two decades later. I can’t get excited about a holiday that falls so close to the day when the woman who gave me life died.

You never truly heal from the death of a parent. You learn to cope with their absence as time creates an ever-widening gulf between you and them. You learn to survive and adapt. Still, you cannot duplicate that relationship with another person. You cannot ever fill that specific void a deceased parent leaves in your life. Such a sobering reality leaves an extra twinge of sadness when they’re gone.

---

---

If you've read my novel Alien People, you'll find it is dedicated to my mother.

Mom was the first audience for my fiction. She loved to read books and instilled a love of reading in her children. And she loved my stories. I regularly shared rough drafts of my early stories with her, and she praised the tales I crafted. This was no parent humoring their child type of love. She genuinely thought they were well-written and couldn’t wait to read each new one. As her physical strength and mobility diminished, I would read my stories to her in her sickbed. In a way, we had come full circle back to the time she read to me as a child.

During the final year of her life, two friends from her local church paid Mom a visit while she was back home recuperating from a chemotherapy session. Their conversation turned to my writing when her friends asked Mom how her children were doing. I was visiting my parents at the time, while on a break from my college classes, so I overheard the conversation from the other room.

Mom mentioned how I wrote short stories and poems and brought them to her to read each time I finished one. She told her friends something I’ll never forget even when my hair has turned gray from old age. Mom said that day, “Many people talk about writing the next great American novel, but John will actually do it.”

I was floored by the compliment and touched by her belief in me. Mom truly stood out as my greatest champion in pursuing my dreams of being an author. Unfortunately, she never lived long enough to witness me realize those dreams. Cancer robbed me of her presence and her light. If she were here now, I have no doubts she would insist on family, friends, and neighbors going out and buying and then reading each new book I published. Seeing her enjoy my current stories would have added a treasured element to my author journey.

---

Ten years ago, I composed a poem expressing what Mom meant to me. These words still resonate with equal depth for me a decade later.

Sunlight seems invisible
until you’re trapped in a dark room.
Water only becomes vital
when you feel sweat on your brow.
So it is with a mother.
She is hidden in the background
until we remember
why we need her presence.
She calms our fears.
Encourages us to pursue a dream.
Wipes away our tears.
Reminds us she is on our team.
Nothing replaces the special bond
between a child and a mom.
She is our champion.
She is a comforter and a friend.
Life’s greatest trials
nor death’s cruel hand
can obscure that simple truth
or bring a mother’s influence 
to an end.

Time will never erase the positive impact Mom continues to have on my life two decades after her untimely death. She always stood alone as my no. 1 supporter in pursuing my dreams. Every story I now create can be traced back to her early encouragement and love.

I only hope my life and my stories can always honor her memory.

---

If you enjoyed today’s poem, check out my Strange New Worlds poetry archives for past poems I’ve shared.

---

---