Today is Thursday, November 13th, 2003; Karen's Korner #174

From a "Chicken Soup for the Soul" daily writing I received a while back:

 

And You Always Will
By LeAnn R. Ralph

I opened the dish-towel drawer for about the sixth
time, hoping the towels had somehow magically appeared.
But of course, the brand-new towels still weren't there.

 

"What did Mom do with them?" I wondered aloud. I knew they
had to be around somewhere because I'd given them to her
for Christmas only a few months ago. Not that the towels
were so terribly important. It's just that when you're
expecting guests, you'd kind of like everything to look
nice. Okay, so maybe I wasn't going to find the dish
towels. But then again, the guests wouldn't arrive until
tomorrow. Plenty of time to worry about dish towels later.
On second thought, maybe I ought to forget about the towels
altogether.

 

My father's niece and her husband didn't seem like the
kind of people who'd leave in a huff because their host
hadn't put out new dish towels. What next? Perhaps I'd
better see if I could lay my hands on Mom's best
tablecloth. A tablecloth was always one of the things my
mother insisted upon when we had company. I went to the
drawer where Mom kept her tablecloths, and sure enough,
there it was. But when I pulled out the hand-embroidered
tablecloth and shook it open, I gasped in dismay. Right in
the middle was a big stain. Now how in the world did Mom's
best tablecloth - the one that had taken her so many months
to finish - end up with a stain? Oh yes, that's right.

We'd all been here for Christmas, and one of my brother's
kids had accidentally knocked over a glass of soda pop.

The sight of her grandchild sobbing with remorse had been
more important than the tablecloth, and Mom had said she
was sure the pop would come out when she washed it.

 

All right, so it looked like I'd have to forget the
tablecloth, too. Maybe I'd be better off attending to the
big things right now, anyway, like vacuuming. Satisfied
that I was finally going to make some progress, I got out
the vacuum cleaner. Except - why did it sound so funny?

And why wasn't it picking up those bits of paper on the
living room carpeting? I pulled out the attachments hose
and flipped the switch again. A-ha. That's why. No
suction. The hose was plugged.

 

Well, of course the hose was plugged. I couldn't find the

new dish towels. Mom's best tablecloth had a big stain.

Why wouldn't the vacuum cleaner hose be plugged?

 

And right then and there, I started to cry. Now what
was I going to do? Would a wire hanger fix the vacuum
cleaner? No new dish towels and no tablecloth was bad
enough, but I absolutely could not let guests come to the
house without vacuuming. I went to my mother's closet,
found a wire hanger and straightened it out. Thirty
minutes later, however, the vacuum cleaner was still
plugged.

 

Where was Dad? I knew he'd gone outside and that,
because it was mid-April, he was probably puttering around
in his garden, but why wasn't he in here when I needed him?

 

After being a farmer for more than fifty years, he could
fix absolutely anything. And besides, I had plenty of
other work to do. Just at that moment, my father came into
the house.

 

"What's wrong?" he asked, noticing my tear-streaked face.

Although it had been years since I called him "Daddy,"
it just sort of slipped out, and along with it came fresh
tears. "Oh, Daddy - I can't find the new dish towels. The
tablecloth has a big stain. The vacuum cleaner is plugged.
And..... and..." I stopped and swallowed hard. "...I miss my
mother."

 

There. I'd said it. And in that instant, the whole world

seemed to stop while Dad drew a deep breath and
let it out slowly. "I know you do," he said. "So do I."

 

You see, only three weeks earlier, my mother was
diagnosed with advanced gallbladder cancer. Mom had died
Saturday night, and this was Monday. My father's niece and
her husband were driving 275 miles to attend the funeral,
and they would be staying at the house.

 

As Dad gazed at me, I noticed how much he seemed to have

aged in the last few weeks. His face was covered with silvery

stubble, too.

 

It was a rare morning when my father didn't shave, but then
again the past couple of days had been far from ordinary.

"And you know what?" Dad continued. "You always will miss
her. In fact, it won't ever go away completely. Not even
when you're as old as I am."

 

After the funeral was over and my father's relatives
had gone home, I found the dish towels. Mom had put them
in her dresser drawer. And with several washings, the
stain finally came out of the tablecloth. Dad had been
able to fix the vacuum cleaner, too.

 

But nothing could fix the fact that my mother was gone.

And now all these years later, I realize Dad was right -

I am always going to miss her.

 

But I've also figured out what else he was trying to
tell me on that April day in 1985 - that missing my mother
keeps her alive in my heart.


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