My Mother Said I love You

My beautiful mother left me many years ago when I was a little girl of nine years old. She never said to me "I love you" not once. Lora was her name. I know that she loved me though, just by the kind things she did for me and sewed me beautiful clothes. She did not have to leave this world the way she did because it was not time for her to die she was only 36 years old. And God did not call her to heaven. She chose to die the way she did because she was so very unhappy.

Her first born child, a little girl, Melba, died when she was only 6 years old of diphtheria. In those days in the 1920's there was no medication for her illness and the doctor did everything he could to save her. She also had a little boy, George, who was two years younger than Melba. And then I was born a few years after Melba died. My father was killed in an automobile accident when I was fourteen months old. So losing her first born child and her husband so close together was something that she never could bear emotionally.

One Sunday in 1942, I had gone to Sunday school and Church with a little girl friend. In the afternoon I heard her in the living room playing the piano, and singing, such a beautiful voice, and she was singing "Rock of Ages". So I went in and sat down to hear her sing and play. Then she got up from the piano and went into the kitchen and I followed her and I saw that she had a bottle in her hand and she had swallowed the contents of the bottle. It was a bottle of poison. She died on the way to the hospital and I never saw my beautiful mother alive again.

I blame my stepfather for her death as she and he had gone into town because she said that she needed something from the drug store. He saw what she bought and he should never have let her buy it or he could have taken it and thrown it away. It was carbolic acid poisoning.

The sad thing is for all these years, I've wondered why she never said I love you to me and why she did not say "good-bye". Or maybe she could have written my brother George, my little half sister, Marianne, and me a little note to say she loved us. Marianne never knew our mother, as she was only two years old when this happened.

I know that my mother in her last moment of life asked for the Lord's forgiveness and I will see her someday in Heaven. Until we meet again, Betty