Mother Dear

by Nova Lee Maier

A friend to everybody is a friend to nobody.

Death didn’t discriminate. Not by age, not by gender or race. Whether you were beautiful or ugly, fat or thin, it made no difference. Death took what it wanted, at random.

The richer she and Werner had grown materially, the poorer their relationship had become.

“There’s no such thing as truth, Helen, only perception. And that’s different for everybody. If we report this—everything will change.” “Everything already has changed.”

Whenever he had a problem or felt sad, he would crawl onto his mother’s lap, and she would stroke his hair and hug him, tell him that everything would be OK and that she was proud of him. She hadn’t been proud of him for a long time. His eyes prickled with tears.

It would make all the difference if he were to throw his arms around her now and make her feel that they had a connection—but he didn’t. Instead, he turned away and rested his hands on his neck, his eyes closed.

“Children should do better than their parents, not repeat their mistakes,”

His mother continued to look him directly in the eye. She scarcely moved. Normally, this was the point where she would leap to her feet and point at him, yelling and calling him a liar. This time, she remained calm, composed. He didn’t know which was worse.

Was there a teenager anywhere in the world who left their parents’ liquor cabinet alone?

“There’s no such thing as friendship between men and women. That’s what my mother always said. One of the two always wants more.”

Resting is doing absolutely nothing for as long as it takes you to get bored.”

Playing the criminal was fun when everything was going well, but as soon as things went wrong, there was no end to the misery.

“Dad told me. We often talk about finances.” She said it casually, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Nobody ever talked about money at Ralf’s house. He had no idea what his parents earned, except that it couldn’t be much. And he knew nothing at all about their financial arrangements.

“What should I tell her?” “That she needs to get away from your father because he probably took her to England to kill her, or to have her killed?”

She couldn’t put her finger on it. He talked, listened, ate, smiled, but his actions didn’t quite seem to match up with his mood, somehow. Tension. That was it; that was what she felt when she looked at him. Tension. Distance.

“There are more cliffs and hills behind it. They call that area the Seven Sisters because there are seven hills. It takes two hours to hike from the first sister to the seventh.”

There was something strange about this hike—it felt more like a military drill. She caught occasional glimpses of Werner’s face. Grim, determined.

Tupac’s mother had outlived her son, he realized. All she had left was his music.

What I didn’t fully understand back then was that, when you died, I lost the last person in the world who loved me selflessly.

When I remember our arguments, I cringe with shame. I was always so critical of you.

Should I have held my tongue and continued to expose my children to the man who tried to kill their mother? Should I have suffered in silence while they spent their weekends with him? A mother’s duty is to protect her children. So that’s what I’ve done.