I’ve carried a burden in my heart for 30 years.
It’s a burden I had somehow managed to tuck into an envelope
and move to the farthest reaches of my heart. It stays hidden there most of
the time, but occasionally I hear it gently knocking as a reminder
of its presence.
My mother died thirty years ago. She was a widow after losing her husband seven years earlier, and moved to Orlando when her three
children were out on their own.
She found a full time job with the Civil Service, a part time job at
a department store and made many friends. She was dating a younger man from our hometown, and enjoying
her time in Orlando with folks she had met when we lived there years ago.
I attended law school in California and had convinced
my younger brother to join me. College simply wasn’t for him, and he ended up
playing baseball for a triple A ball team in San Diego. My sister married a
Navy man and was living in Charleston.
My mother was an empty nester.
Then The Powers That Be played a cruel joke on all of us. She died suddenly after a fall in her kitchen.
For many years I felt incredibly guilty for leaving the
nest. I felt just horrible for
convincing my brother to come out west, leaving her alone. It’s a burden I've never been able to
shake. I don't think of it as
often these days, but it still manages to make my heart ache every once in a while.
Until now.
It happened when I was enjoying some quiet moments at the
beach over Thanksgiving break. Oh sure, being in the Cayman Islands on a white
sandy beach can make any burden seem tiny, but this particular trouble was an
important one.
I was sitting in a chair looking out at the water and had an
epiphany. I’ve HEARD of
epiphanies, but I pretty much thought they came with sounding trumpets and
showers of confetti.
I was wrong.
Instead, it came on the gentle ocean breeze whispering into my heart. It told me a secret that mothers keep.
It told me that my mother was not lonely those many years
ago. It told me that she wasn’t
angry about her chicks flying away.
It told me that she was very proud of their winged flights and of the
paths they were walking. It told me that she was moving forward with her own
life and happy and proud that her children were moving on with theirs. It told me that mothers know when it’s
time for their children to move forward with their own journeys and that it was
okay.
The breeze delivered me forgiveness for a burden I needn’t
have been carrying.
That beautiful, sweet ocean breeze picked up that tiny
envelope that I had tucked away in my heart, put a stamp on it,sent it
blowing across the water and set me free.
