Marie sat and looked at her mother, as she lay sleeping in the hospital bed. Marie, reliving all the pain of the past.

Still with questions that were sure to remain unanswered, she tried to love her mother, help her somehow.

Marie never understood why her mother hated her so. She had always been there for her. Marie always tried to help when she could, and stood up to people who ridiculed her mother.

No matter what she did, she was never good enough for her mother, only her sisters were good enough. One sister who stabbed her in the back, the other one, stood up to their mother. Now Marie realized that maybe her sisters were right in the way they reacted to their mother’s treatment of them. It was too late now to settle any of the harsh feelings and resentment. Marie’s mother now didn’t know who anyone was, much less the things she did in her past to hurt her daughter.

Marie sat and remembered so many things, painful things. Marie remembered the good too, but it never would out weigh the bad things.

Her mother had once took out a life insurance policy on Marie, because she thought Marie had cancer, something she dreamed up, maybe wished, in her own mind. She put herself down as the beneficiary in hopes of making some money off of Marie’s death, if she didn’t make it through the surgery. Marie survived the surgery, so her mother cancelled the policy. Marie wondered if her mother ever realized how bad that hurt her, or if she even really cared. She didn’t think she really did.

As she was being abused by her husband, her mother began telling lies to her husband about Marie, making things harder yet for Marie. That hurt Marie so deeply. Still her mother didn’t seem to care.

When Marie finally got out of the abusive marriage, her mother talked to her ex-husband and invited him over to go swimming with her. That hurt Marie very deeply too. She just never seemed to stop deliberately hurting Marie. But Marie felt that she was supposed to continue to respect, love and honor her mother. No matter how much she did to her, Marie continued trying. And now as she sat here with her mother, she wondered why and how she took it all those years. Why did she? She would never know the true meaning of a mother’s love and devotion. Now Marie, true to herself and who she was, sat and wondered and worried about her mother’s eternity and where it would be spent. How can someone treat their own family, especially their own child, the way that she had treated Marie? She guessed now she would never know.

Marie had tried so many times to explain to her mother the pain she caused her and her mother never cared.

Marie began to wonder, why was she still sitting here with her mother now? Her mother had never really loved her, and now doesn’t even realize that she’s here. 

Marie took one last look at her mother lying there. She whispered, “Good-bye Mother, I always loved you,” then she got up and left. She shut the door, but the questions still, and always would, remain unanswered.

Marie wiped her tears and promised to go on with what was left of the wreck of a life her mother left her with.

© 2004 Janice Jarnagin