I would have girlfriends today if for no other reason than that my mother didn’t, and I viewed her life as lacking in that one very important way.<\/p>\n
Of course I think of my own mother this time of year, and I remember sadly the way she died.\u00a0 ALS is a scary ending.\u00a0 She was already widowed by then and was\u00a0lost without him.\u00a0 Those years before she left us are difficult\u00a0in memory even after more than a decade.\u00a0 During that long time of being bedridden, no girlfriends\u00a0came to visit.<\/p>\n
And not a single solitary girlfriend crossed my mother’s threshold in all the years I lived at home.\u00a0 Her husband and her work were\u00a0everything to her.\u00a0 She talked about school chums, but I never met any.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Maybe her own mother would be the closest\u00a0she had to a girlfriend, if by that you mean\u00a0telling each other nearly everything.\u00a0 But\u00a0there was more competition there than support and I wouldn’t\u00a0want\u00a0 a relationship like the one they had – not with a friend and not with a mother.<\/p>\n
At the end of her life, her\u00a0accomplishments were (I hope) what she had as comfort.\u00a0 Professional colleagues phoned –\u00a0singers and musicians and fellow evangelists.\u00a0 But no girlfriend called.<\/p>\n