Toward the end of her life, as her thinking became cloudier, my mother called out often for her mother, seeming to see her mother’s image and hear her mother beckoning her. It was as though she remembered nothing except her earliest formative years, when she lived in the little house on 28th Street, the only child of an adoring mom. Everything that came after–career, husband, five children–fell away and was forgotten.
Sometimes as I witnessed this, I wondered about people who grow up in orphanages, without any one specific, known person they identify as “mother.” At the end of their lives, who do they call out to? Who do they see? Who reaches out to greet them as they pass from this dimension to whatever is next?
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