The Dance

My brother will never dance with my mom at his wedding.

It’s weird how that is one of the things that resonates so strongly with me.  That thought first hit me when my mom was laying in the hospital during her last days, and it has come back to me often.

A moment.  That will never be.  Lost.

I’ve cried for that lost moment many times.  

Dancing with Joe at my wedding

My brother, Joseph’s relationship with my mom was very different than mine.  They didn’t talk every day.  They drove each other simultaneously crazy.  My mom with her hovering, my brother with his fierce independent streak.  They both struggled to be able to give the other what they needed.  

But they loved each other in the purest of  ways.  Fiercely.  My brother with the fiercest of loyalty and my mom with the fiercest of heart.  The two of them, beacons of strength.  So different but so the same.  

When my mom died it was Joseph that I worried the most for.  He’s the strong silent type keeping a lot inside.  A rock.  His silent sobs at her burial were my undoing.  My already broken heart shattered.  The weight of all the moments that would never be turned me inside out.

My brother will never dance with my mom at his wedding.

That sentence paralyzes me.  It is the very essence that haunts the inner corners of my heart.  A worry so deep I don’t know how to break its hold. 

Because,

I am a mom.

I have a son (I have two sons).

I will dance with them at their wedding.