Writing prompt #53 — Mother’s Day
The Motherless Day
An annual event for the last 52 years
I am a Motherless Daughter. My mother died from lung cancer when I was 12. And no, before you even ask, she never smoked a day in her life. In 1972, women rarely contracted lung cancer. And it was a statistical anomaly that a non-smoking woman would die from said cancer. But it happened. It happened to my mother. To our family. To me.
I’ve written about being a member of The Motherless Daughter Club a while back. I don’t think there is ever a good time in one’s life to face the death of your mother. Mothers are like that. They’re supposed to be there for you. There at every new step, every transition, every sorrowful moment, and every joy-filled celebration.
When they’re not — the vacuum surrounding their absence is vast.
My mother was a full-blooded Italian. My grandparents emigrated to the United States at the turn of the 20th century. She was raised in an Italian neighborhood and English was her second language. They were poor, my mother’s family. Santa would leave my mother and each of her siblings an orange in their stockings for Christmas. My mother’s birthday, Christmas Eve, would come and go with very little hoopla. She learned to sew early on — to make doll clothes out of scraps and…
