Pieces Of Her Heart

 

By Harry Cummins

     Until the day in 1984 when she just collapsed on the kitchen floor and died, I believe my mother had always thought of her life as being hard.

     She was married most of the time, to my father for a short while until his drinking drove her away, then to another man for nearly 30 years. It was sometime early into those 30 years that I grew into the understanding that my mother had given up on her own happiness.

     When I was in the sixth grade, my mother sent me away to live with a Norwegian family near San Francisco. Even then I never doubted her love. Often she would come to visit, putting her powerful arms around me and squeezing so hard I could barely breathe

 "Your happiness means everything to me," she would say.

     As my own life moved ahead, I could feel my uneasiness that hers was not.  Love held us close, but we seldom spoke to one another about what really mattered. In the end we got a little better at it.

     I know this now:  There is nothing so remarkable as the gifts we freely extend to others in the face of our own unhappiness.  It is not just ideal families or undamaged dreams that begat hope and affection. It is the powerful mystery of human love extended one to another.

     The mosaic beauty of broken pieces.