The voice

As I drifted to sleep last night I suddenly heard a voice that hadn't heard in 14 years. "Brian!" It screamed, it was the sound of my mother's voice as if she were calling me inside for dinner while I was playing. The tone and pitch was exact and it was shocking enough to rouse me awake for another half hour. Now, I know it was just some weird memory blip while I was entering a REM state, but the sound of my dead mother's voice felt incredibly real. After a brief moment of melancholy and missing my mother, I felt a warm secure feeling as if I was in the womb or being hugged by my mother as a child. I lay there peacefully as I finally drifted back to sleep.

I realize that some people would attribute my experience of hearing my dead mother's voice and subsequent warm and fuzzy feelings to the presence of a spirit or some sort of religious experience. Unfortunately for me, I can't make that illogical jump to such things. I will however never deny the unconditional love that most of experience with our mothers. I quite frankly don't care if it's just pure instinct or inbred for a mother to love her children with no strings attached. I can't dismiss the feeling and emotions that one gets from the purity of love that a mother has for her children.

So while this coming Sunday, Mother's Day, is largely a commercial holiday designed to sell flowers and cards, I firmly believe we should have a day to honor our mothers. While I can no longer personally thank my mother anymore I can honor and thank my wife Lynn for being just as good as mother to my children (if not, then better). My children absolutely dote on her and I can completely understand why.