She held a bouquet of white roses against her chest and was already crying before my name had been called.
Her dark curls were pinned back carefully, although one stubborn strand had escaped near her cheek. She wore the navy-blue dress she had bought months earlier and insisted was “far too fancy for an old nurse,” despite my repeated arguments that she looked beautiful.
Around her neck hung the silver necklace I had given her after college graduation.
The graduation program in her lap was already wrinkled from being held too tightly.
When she spotted me among the graduates, her entire face lit up with pride so pure it nearly brought me to a stop.
That was my mother.
Not the woman who gave birth to me.
Not the woman sitting frozen two seats away after fifteen years of silence.
My mother was the woman who drove me to chemotherapy appointments when I was bald and trembling.
The woman who slept upright beside my hospital bed because I woke from nightmares screaming.
