By Millicent Howard, November 2024
Dear Mother,
As the chill autumn wind breathes through me, I miss you more than ever. Around me, strangers far from home exchange stories of their mothers, their laughter tinged with homesickness. I try to join in, but the words catch in my throat—Mother is a home I can never return to.
I can still see those early moments with you, playing on the floor, your laughter blending with mine as you chased me until I could barely keep my eyes open. But as time went on, your steps grew slower, your hands resting on your growing belly. I wanted to play as we always had, but you were too tired, and I didn’t yet understand why.
And then, you gifted me a baby brother. I remember looking at him, swaddled and smelling of warm milk, and suddenly, I understood. As the years passed, I became the one crawling and chasing, tumbling across the floor with him like scattered marbles until we wore ourselves out.
Why is it that people say everything happens for a reason? I close my eyes, and the faces of those I love appear to me. My older sister, her eyes blue like winter—icy icicles dripping from eaves and the warm sky that melts them. My baby brother, whose silly grin brings me laughter even through memories. I loved being in the middle of them both, tethered between their orbits in a perfect game of tug-of-war, holding us all together with love.
But when you took your final breath, everything unraveled. I screamed at God, at Jesus, at every name I had once whispered in faith. Night after night, I begged them for a miracle, pleading for a reason to make sense of the unbearable weight of your absence.
For the year that followed, all anyone could say was, “God has a plan for you. Everything happens for a reason.”
Mother, I’ve searched for that reason, combing through every moment and memory, but all I find is anger. Anger at a world that continues turning, at people who speak of reasons as if grief is a lesson to be learned or a puzzle to be solved.
When I try to sleep, memories rush at me, like wild film reels spinning out of control. I see us in the kitchen, sunlight pooling on the floor where we once played. But the images fracture, and cruel memories creep in, unraveling the safety of those moments.
And yet, through this pain, I turn to the faces I’m still blessed to see—my sister, my brother, my father.
They are my reasons.
The next time someone tells me that “everything happens for a reason,” I will think of them.
Mother, send me a kiss through the wind, and when I speckle with goosebumps, I’ll know that you have reached me. There is nothing more mysterious than fate, and I wonder where you are - I search for you in every sunset that blushes the sky, every river carving its path through the earth, every leaf spinning gracefully to the ground. You are everywhere, woven into nature’s quiet yet unforgiving beauty.
I'll see you on my next walk, bike ride, or hike. In every rustling tree and gleaming stream, you will be there. My reasons are all around me, blooming in the spaces you once filled.
Yorumlar