Mother's day continued

I did go home for Mother's Day, the year 1993. It was just like I had planned, the front porch swing and coffee and curling smoke and laughter and memories.  The old tree's trunk still lay on the ground, covered with a pretty green vine. There were no lightning bugs and we were too lazy and content to go to Sunday School but the red roses were blooming and I was not a wife or mother or friend but just Jane, my mother's daughter.

I did not know what the next Mother's Day would be like. If I had I would have lingered longer with my mama that day.

I can still see her standing in the road, watching,  as we drove off, her arms crossed over her stomach, the belt to her dress slipped up too high, her feet in her old shoes. I wondered as she stood there what she was thinking or seeing in her mind. Was she seeing that black hearse taking her little boy down that road, to bring him back in a little white casket? Was she thinking about the last time Daddy went down that road to the nursing home, leaving her alone in the home where we had lived for over fifty years.   I almost told my husband stop and go back as I saw her standing there.