Todays helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul

[Guest guest]

And You Always Will

By LeAnn R. Ralph

I opened the dish-towel drawer for about the sixth time, hoping the

towels

had somehow magically appeared. But of course, the brand-new towels still

weren't there. " What did Mom do with them? " I wondered aloud. I knew they

had

to be around somewhere because I'd given them to her for Christmas only a

few

months ago. Not that the towels were so terribly important. It's just that

when you're expecting guests, you'd kind of like everything to look nice.

Okay,

so maybe I wasn't going to find the dish towels. But then again, the guests

wouldn't arrive until tomorrow. Plenty of time to worry about dish towels

later. On second thought, maybe I ought to forget about the towels

altogether.

My father's niece and her husband didn't seem like the kind of people

who'd

leave in a huff because their host hadn't put out new dish towels. What

next?

Perhaps I'd better see if I could lay my hands on Mom's best tablecloth. A

tablecloth was always one of the things my mother insisted upon when we had

company. I went to the drawer where Mom kept her tablecloths, and sure

enough,

there it was. But when I pulled out the hand-embroidered tablecloth and

shook

it open, I gasped in dismay. Right in the middle was a big stain. Now how

in

the world did Mom's best tablecloth - the one that had taken her so many

months

to finish - end up with a stain? Oh yes, that's right. We'd all been here

for

Christmas, and one of my brother's kids had accidentally knocked over a

glass of

soda pop. The sight of her grandchild sobbing with remorse had been more

important than the tablecloth, and Mom had said she was sure the pop would

come

out when she washed it.

All right, so it looked like I'd have to forget the tablecloth, too.

Maybe

I'd be better off attending to the big things right now, anyway, like

vacuuming.

Satisfied that I was finally going to make some progress, I got out the

vacuum

cleaner. Except - why did it sound so funny? And why wasn't it picking up

those bits of paper on the living room carpeting? I pulled out the

attachments

hose and flipped the switch again. A-ha. That's why. No suction. The

hose

was plugged. Well, of course the hose was plugged. I couldn't find the new

dish towels. Mom's best tablecloth had a big stain. Why wouldn't the

vacuum

cleaner hose be plugged?

And right then and there, I started to cry. Now what was I going to

do?

Would a wire hanger fix the vacuum cleaner? No new dish towels and no

tablecloth was bad enough, but I absolutely could not let guests come to the

house without vacuuming. I went to my mother's closet, found a wire hanger

and

straightened it out. Thirty minutes later, however, the vacuum cleaner was

still plugged.

Where was Dad? I knew he'd gone outside and that, because it was mid-

April, he was probably puttering around in his garden, but why wasn't he in

here

when I needed him? After being a farmer for more than fifty years, he could

fix

absolutely anything. And besides, I had plenty of other work to do. Just

at

that moment, my father came into the house. " What's wrong? " he asked,

noticing

my tear-streaked face.

Although it had been years since I called him " Daddy, " it just sort of

slipped out, and along with it came fresh tears. " Oh, Daddy - I can't find

the

new dish towels. The tablecloth has a big stain. The vacuum cleaner is

plugged. And - and. . . . " I stopped and swallowed hard. " . . . I miss my

mother. " There. I'd said it. And in that instant, the whole world seemed

to

stop while Dad drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.

" I know you do, " he said. " So do I. "

You see, only three weeks earlier, my mother was diagnosed with

advanced

gallbladder cancer. Mom had died Saturday night, and this was Monday. My

father's niece and her husband were driving 275 miles to attend the funeral,

and

they would be staying at the house. As Dad gazed at me, I noticed how much

he

seemed to have aged in the last few weeks. His face was covered with

silvery

stubble, too. It was a rare morning when my father didn't shave, but then

again

the past couple of days had been far from ordinary. " And you know what? "

Dad

continued. " You always will miss her. In fact, it won't ever go away

completely. Not even when you're as old as I am. "

After the funeral was over and my father's relatives had gone home, I

found

the dish towels. Mom had put them in her dresser drawer. And with several

washings, the stain finally came out of the tablecloth. Dad had been able

to

fix the vacuum cleaner, too. But nothing could fix the fact that my mother

was

gone. And now all these years later, I realize Dad was right - I am always

going to miss her.

But I've also figured out what else he was trying to tell me on that

April

day in 1985 - that missing my mother keeps her alive in my heart.