There are nights and days I can’t stop thinking about my mother

September 20th 2025

Worrying about her even though it’s been years since we’ve spoken, except for the letters she sends now and then.

I can feel her just the same, hear her asking me like a frightened child,

“Is the bad stuff around?”

Some days I catch shadows of them out of the corner of my eye, slinking down the stairs stopping just out of sight as she would.

I hear their feet tiptoeing across the hallway carpet, stopping to stand just outside our bedroom doorway some nights.

And I raise my head from my pillow to look right at whoever’s lurking, always seeing that the kitties are awake and staring in the same direction. I pat their sleepy little heads, say a prayer to my mother, and go back to sleep.

I know these shadows belong to her. I know she is reaching out to me again, running from her demons.

But old habits die hard.

And sometimes I reach back without trying. I feel as if I’m floating in and out of her nightmares even now just to be near her, to comfort her.

Assuring her she doesn’t have to face them alone.

She always knew I could see them too, even though we never formally talked about it, she mentioned them multiple times as if we had.

“They’re in there,” she’d say pointing to her bedroom.

It was a couple years ago now that my husband was at a tattoo appointment in Durham while I sat at home knitting in our living room. I stopped mid loop when I heard a nasty productive cough.

There was a flash of the tattoo studio as if I was sitting in one of the chairs. I was facing the wall that separated the employee kitchen from the artists stations. The wet cough was coming from a man on the other side of the wall. I could hear him assuring everyone he just had bad allergies and it was nothing.

“Oof,” I thought, “that guy should not be in the studio. He knows it’s not allergies, he just didn’t wanna reschedule his appointment.”

Later that afternoon, sitting at our favorite Mexican restaurant I asked Joe, “Was there by any chance a guy with a nasty cough at the studio?”

He confirmed there was and as I described what I saw and heard and from where I’d seen it from, a smile grew on his face as he said that my perspective was exactly his view from where he was sitting for his tattoo.

We all do this from time to time.

Checking in on the ones we love.

Seeing through their eyes, hearing what they’re hearing and feeling what they’re feeling in a very real way

I think sometimes it’s happening and we just don’t recognize it as such or receive confirmation and so we believe it was just a random thought… a random song or scent or image that came to us and nothing more.

It’s not that this kind of thing hadn’t happened before without me being able to confirm it, but for some reason on that occasion it clicked just how much I was still in communication with all these people I love — including my mother.

So often seeing what she’s seeing even in my own kitchen or lying in my own bed.

Even in her mistakes and the pain she’s caused, she still teaches me. She still helps me understand what I’m feeling and who I am. She’s still exactly the mother I needed.

I sat one afternoon feeling her with me again as if she were willing her spirit to come sit next to me.

I sent a prayer to her saying,

“Mom, I know we may not be able to be in contact in this life, but I will always love you in a place outside space and time.”

I let it go and felt myself hugging her.

A couple days later I received a card from her in the mail. I opened it, read it, shut it, and set it back down on the coffee table not saying a word.

I needed a minute.

I wasn’t ready for just how on the nose those words were.

My mind may never be able to grasp such complicated things, but my heart will always just want to keep on loving no matter the distance.

Thank you for reading. We love you!