3 TRAPPED
Receiving Love
I remember the feeling of my mom’s hand on my head. As a kid, with my head on her lap, finding comfort in sickness, getting my ears cleaned, or just taking a rest. There’s a tender warmth in this gesture, even when you’re the one on the giving end, rather than the receiving. It’s a small, relatively noninvasive act, an initiation of physical contact with another being to whom we feel endeared, like an animal or a small child.
While my mom was dying, our roles reversed. Just as she’d had done for me when I couldn’t, I took care of her basic needs. While she lay mostly in bed, we’d visit a lot, talk about things. One time when there really wasn’t anything left to talk about, I leaned down to rest my cheek on her stomach, and gently placed her hand on my head, just to feel it while I still could.
