A Mother’s Touch

 Too many cloudy, rainy days had left their mark on me.  Achy bones,

stiff muscles.  I was going to bed, but knew I would not sleep.  The tension

in my neck would not let go.  As I lay there, some of the days happenings

came drifting across my mind.  My daughter had called.  She had been

troubled most all her life, manic depression.  She had done a good job of

hiding it from me.  She has been under doctor’s care for many years.  Now,

as we are both older, she is telling me incidents from the past.  How long

ago, I don’t know.  In one of her suicidal moments, she was sitting at the

kitchen table, with a butcher knife in front of her, ready to slit her wrists.

There came a knock on the door, a door-to-door evangelist.  He spoke to her

briefly, then left.

Moments later, another knock.  He was back with his partner, no books,

no pressure.  They sat at the table, just talking, for over two hours.  They

had talked her through her bad time.

The point she wanted to make to me was that even though she couldn’t

believe in God, she knew that these men had been sent to her, that they had

seen her desperation, and they responded. Sent by whom, she didn’t know.

Without hesitation, “Your Grandmother” passed my lips.  In that instant, I

told myself an obvious fact that for over fifty years I had failed to see.  My

guardian angel was my Mother, doing what she had not been able to do

physically.  She is still protecting the child she had to leave behind.

In a soft, yet audible voice, I said, “Thank you, Mother.  I’ve felt your

hand on my shoulder many times, just didn’t know it was you.”  I talked to

her for several minutes, saying some of the things I would have said if she

had been face to face.  I felt like a child, safe, protected, healed.  Most of all,

loved.  I felt the tension drain from my neck.  I slept almost instantly, a

sound relaxing sleep, waking in the morning refreshed.  Ready to face

another rainy day.