Dear Mom,

I wish I had missed you more when I could have done more than miss you.

Dear Mom,

I wish I had missed you more when I could have done more than miss you. I wish I had thought of you every day when you were here to call or text. I wish I had called or texted you every day. I wish I had navigated the 100 miles of east Texas between us more often.

I am sorry.

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee

One of my earliest memories of you, I was four or maybe five. I had fallen while playing with Dad and Troy and skinned up my knee pretty good. It was bleeding and I was bawling.

Dad said to Troy, “Take him to his mother.”

Troy did. You cleaned my wound, doctored and bandaged it, and set about to make Divinity candy. That was the painkiller!

Hell hath no fury like Mom

I was a junior in high school, you remember, and crazy about sports - all of them. You and Dad put us kids in a small Christian school, operated by Big Granddad’s church. It was tiny. We had barely enough guys in the 9th-12th grades to field a football team if we all played both ways. We got smeared most games because we were playing bigger schools with actual sports programs.

We had a pretty good boys’ volleyball team that year, though. My best friend (more like a brother, you know) Robert Bunnell was kicked off the team right before the season-ending tournament, which we were hosting. That tournament would decide the league champions for the year. I was livid with the school principal and coach of every sport Al Henager for removing Robert and I made my displeasure known. Al proceeded to kick me off the team and, maybe because my appeal made sense, reinstated Robert.

We won the only first-place sports trophy we would win that year and I was not even allowed to attend the event.

I remember how you came furiously to my defense. You lit up Al like a Christmas tree…until you got the adult’s side of the story. Then, you apologized to him and also made me do so.

Thanks for the fury and the example of making wrongs right, even if you must eat humble pie. I enjoyed the Divinity more than the pie, but I needed both.

Mom to the rescue

In 1997, I faced the biggest blunder and mismanagement of my life. I faced professional and financial ruin.

You came flying to my aid. You never had much but you had your house paid off, or nearly so, and took out a mortgage to give me the money to keep me from sinking like Titanic.

I have never put that in print and I never thanked you enough for it even though I thanked you profusely for years. It was never enough. I spent the rest of your life trying to repay your kindness and investment in me. I could spend the rest of my life and eternity doing so and still come short.

My turn, Mom

One of the most painful, endearing moments I remember was 10 or so years after Dad died. You had been for that decade the picture of unwavering strength. You were the shelter from the storm of loss for all of us, though none lost more than you when the only man you ever loved died at 51.

It was around Christmas. You were at our house in Grand Prairie, helping Donya prepare the holiday meal. I was doing then what I am doing now, sitting at a keyboard, writing. I heard the crash in the kitchen and came running.

You had fallen.

You lay there sobbing. I held you for a few minutes before getting you to your feet. I felt the release of so much pain at that moment. It was more than the fall. It was everything - the loss of Dad, the stress of life, the uncertainty of the future, the memories of the past, the love, the tooth-and-nail fight for survival, the exhaustion of it all poured out of you in those tears.

You were always my strength, defender, true believer, cheerleader, example, and hero. I never felt your vulnerability until then. You never let it show. Though you grew up on a farm, picking cotton and fighting poverty…though you followed Dad’s elusive dreams from one-horse town to one-horse town…though you had to make do with not enough most of your life…you never let it show.

You were sad, like us. You were hurting, just like us. You needed our strength, the strength you infused us with. I hope we gave it back to you as well as you had given it to us.

I wish I had sat with you and rehearsed these and a million other Mom moments. Like soldiers of The Old Guard, they faithfully watch over my soul in the weariest and loneliest times.

I wish I had missed you more when I could have done more than miss you.

I wish I could wish you Happy Mother’s Day again.

Because I do.

I love you,

The Littlest Cowboy (Gene)

Mom and us