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She wasn’t even really directing her questions to me; she was crying out to the God in whom she put so much trust and faith. In her grief and pain, my mother simply wanted to know why. “Dear God, why?” But that was a question for which I did not have an answer.
“Never be afraid to tell the truth, Sam. Not to the people who love you.”
Everything God does is for a reason, Sam; every cross we bear is an opportunity.
“Time is wicked. It comes and goes like a thief in the night, stealing our youth, our beauty, and our bodies.” I had watched Grandma O’Malley, a proud and simple woman, shrink and wrinkle and turn white over the years. But we expect that of our grandparents. Not our parents. For some reason, we think our parents will never grow old, perhaps because when they do, we are forced to acknowledge that we will one day grow old, and we face our own mortality.
were our silent acknowledgment that while the years might not have been extraordinary, as she had so diligently prayed, they had been ours.
But to my mother—I suspect to all mothers—their little boys will always be their little boys, no matter how old those boys become.
There comes a day in every man’s life when he stops looking forward and starts looking back.
The day we marry. The days our children are born. Their first step. Their first word. Their first day of school. And when our children grow, we remember those moments with a touch of melancholy: the day they get their driver’s license, the day we drive them to college, the day they marry, and the day they have their children. And the cycle begins anew. We realize it is in those quiet moments that each of us has the ability to make our lives extraordinary.
