Missing Mom

My friend Becky sent this to me today.... It really reached out to me and how I feel so I had to post it...it is out of a book, Loud and Clear, a compilation of novelist, columnist, Anna Quindlen's columns that she wrote for Newsweek & The NY Times. Only a short portion of the book is about the loss of her mother. Here is part of it....
"We're different, those of us whose mother has gone and left us to fend for ourselves. For that is what we wind up doing, no matter how good our fathers, or family, or friends: On some deep emotional level, we fend for ourselves...."
"The funny thing is that the loss makes us good and happy people in some ways, too, in love with life because we know how fleeting and how precious it can be. We have our priorities straight. When I quit a great job as a columnist because I wanted to take up another great job as a novelist, lots of readers couldn't understand why I would give up a public forum for a quieter, more private one. The answer was simple: I wanted to. But I knew to do what I wanted, when I wanted, because I know that today is the only certainty I possess. I'm pretty sure I'll die a woman without regrets. My mother left me that, along with her engagement ring."
"There's a hole in my heart, and nothing to plug it. The truth is that there's no one, ever, in your life like your mother. And that's even if she's a bad mother, punitive, critical. Your mother is the mirror. Whether you elect to gaze at the reflection with equanimity, to tilt the glass or crack it outright, it is the point from which you always begin."