A Visit from Mom

by Jules V Ness
(mn, US)

A Visit From Mom
Jules V Ness
I woke with such a start that my body had automatically bolted itself into an upright position. For some reason, unknown to me, I had an overwhelming feeling that I was being observed. Even though my eyes were still blurry from sleep and not quite cooperating, I frantically searched the immediate area surrounding my bed. I felt a sudden stab in my gut as I realized someone truly was there, standing at the very foot of my bed. I flung my hand out sideways in the darkness towards my bedside table. I was desperately searching for my eyeglasses that I had left lying there just a few hours earlier. Without them or my contact lenses, what I thought I was visualizing as a person could easily have been my bathrobe dangling innocently from the six foot tall post at the end of my bed.
As I searched blindly in the dark, I felt them for just an instant, barely brushing them with my fingertips. The force was just enough to send them whirling off of the night stand and spinning across the wooden floor. So much for that, my only choice now was to squint like a mole and try to make out whom, if anyone was truly there.
Concentrating to focus, I was able to make out the figure; it appeared to be a woman. She was wearing a brightly flowered dress with a brown tattered work coat over it. It reminded me of the ones we used to wear on our family farm during my childhood years. The woman was staring at me in an odd sort of a way. Her head was slightly quirked to one side. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I could hear the echo of each beat inside of my head. But then, even in my half blind state, I began to notice the warm soft smile on the woman’s face. I squinted a little harder. She seemed vaguely familiar to me. My brain shifted into overdrive racing through all my past and present trying to sort out a name that I could place with this face. Suddenly, I realized who was standing there! Oh my God, it was my mother!
I had not recognized her in those first waking moments, only because she no longer looked pale and ravished as she had the last time I saw her. She appeared quite youthful, vibrant and full of love; exactly as she had been before the cancer had attacked her young body at twenty eight years of age. Mom died twenty two years ago slowly and painfully, one pound at a time. She was thirty years old, the exact age that I am now.
This truly happened to me. I was in a horrible place in my life and I believe my mother decided to intervene. She changed my whole life, it affected me so much that I actually wrote a book about it; Intertwined Based on a True Story, if you would like to read a couple of chapters , check it out on Amazon. Our loved ones never truly leave our sides. Jules V Ness