When I find myself in times of trou­ble Mother Mary comes to me. Speak­ing words of wis­dom, let it be. And in my hour of dark­ness she is stand­ing right in front of me, speak­ing words of wis­dom, let it be. Let it be, let it be. Whis­per words of wis­dom, let it be.

My mother’s name was Mary. When­ever I heard this song as a kid I pre­sumed every­body knew my mom was a great lis­tener and giver of advice. As I grew up I real­ized that Paul was singing about a more widely known woman named Mary.

The mother I spawned from passed away in June of 1981. Just when I was in dire need of matronly advice, she was gone due to the rav­ages of can­cer. I was a con­fused teen on the cusp of finally being per­mit­ted to date. Six­teen was the age at which girls in our fam­ily were allowed to have a boyfriend. All I’d had were crazy crushes that were never real­ized due to the restric­tions placed upon me. Still, hav­ing my mother tell me how to han­dle myself or get over the painful heartache of non­rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing crushes would have been fantastic.

Because mom had always shared her tales of para­nor­mal belief, I lived in fear of such unearthly vis­its from loved ones. The idea of being face to filmy face with some­one did not appeal to me. So, I remem­ber telling my mom dur­ing one of our rare con­ver­sa­tions dur­ing her ill­ness that I’d pre­fer she not haunt me — lov­ingly or not. Once she passed away I regret­ted mak­ing that declaration.

After years of liv­ing in denial that mom was indeed gone for­ever, it became abun­dantly clear that I was a 20-something in dire need of her mother. As cal­en­dar pages flew by and became a decade, I truly wanted my mother’s guid­ance. My sis­ters, father and step-mom tried to fill Mary Caroline’s shoes. How­ever, at no fault of their own, their attempts fell just short.

Call it what you want, my sub­con­scious long­ing or para­nor­mal vis­i­ta­tions, she came to me in a dream. For the first time a dozen years, my mother sat on the bed I shared with my then hus­band and she told me as her hand brushed the hair from my face, “You can go now.” This time was unlike any other as any such visions always took place in the past or at the home where I grew up. At that moment I awoke dis­ap­pointed that the vision of her was gone. But sud­denly the inner tur­moil I had been feel­ing about my mar­riage was gone. Mancub’s father and I had talked for years about leav­ing Kanka­kee and start­ing new in another state. It would test the resolve of our mar­riage and his the­ory that we were strained because of the involve­ment of my fam­ily. That was 1997. We moved to Geor­gia and divorced in 1999. Look­ing back, I believe my mother’s mes­sage about ‘going’ really meant that I could leave my mar­riage and find hap­pi­ness on my own with Mancub.

My noc­tur­nal pow-wows with mom have been few and far between since that night in 1997. My visions, for lack of a bet­ter term, have been merely see­ing her in pass­ing. No com­fort­ing talks on my bed­side occurred. From time to time I’ll dream about a moment in my child­hood that involved Mom, but no heart to hearts take place.

That is until recently. I haven’t talked a lot about my per­sonal life much lately on this blog. I’ve touched on it, but noth­ing in depth. My career is not up for grabs as blog folly. Such shenani­gans can lead to job loss. Inter­per­sonal rela­tion­ships have proven to be per­fect blog fod­der when the object of my affec­tions doesn’t read the posts or hap­pens to be such a flip­pin’ dirt bag that he’s no longer wel­come. At which point I don’t care. I always change names to pro­tect the stupid.

With all of that being said, I’ve bot­tled up a lot. My role at work has changed so I am not at lib­erty to just spout off. There’s a path that must be fol­lowed in order to bring res­o­lu­tion. And my per­sonal life is so com­pli­cated that you’d think I was a patho­log­i­cal liar or test­ing out a theme for a roman­tic com­edy screen play or cheesy Life­time movie.

Because I have so much pent up, it was clear the other night that I des­per­ately needed com­fort that only a mother can give her child. In the room where I cur­rently sleep, Mama Mary sat at my bed­side and calmed me.  No longer was I toss­ing and turn­ing and fran­ti­cally out of con­trol. Still sleep­ing, she sat next to me and sang while she brushed my hair from my face.  I tried to speak, but words didn’t come.  She qui­eted my nerves and calmed my soul.  I felt myself awak­en­ing and I fought it. More time with my mom was needed but early morn­ing broke and I was back in my bed alone with noth­ing but dark­ness sur­round­ing me. My eyes scanned the room in search of a spark of light or a twin­kle. Any­thing to indi­cate it wasn’t just a dream.

What I know from this is that in my times of trou­ble my mother Mary comes to me …