Your love flows endlessly...
Updated: May 23, 2020
Dear Mama,
Your love flows endlessly, like the Nile toward the ancient seas.
Stalwartly, like ships on their fated journey the the shores of Normandy.
Religiously,
like monks documenting crucial history.
And though neither tides, nor storms, nor time could diminish truths about these three, nor can your love be ever diminished for us three. Thank you for loving us well.
-Your 3 Grateful Children
I changed one line in my own Mother’s Day letter: instead of just signing “Your 3 Grateful Children,” I wrote out each of our names and read the Nile-to-ancient-seas verse aloud, then recorded it so Mama can replay it. For anyone turning a poem like this into something she can hear, recording a spoken tribute for Mama keeps the cadence and the “neither tides, nor storms, nor time” promise intact.
Three grateful children signing one letter assumes a shared voice I don’t have; after my mother died, my brother and I stopped speaking, so “Your 3 Grateful Children” can’t be written together. The Nile and Normandy still move, but grief here is filed alone. I use a shared family memory worksheet to gather dates and phrases before they dissolve, then send one page at a time. Maybe endless love survives without a unanimous chorus.
Three grateful children can sign one letter; I’m the only one left on this side of the ocean, so there’s no shared “Dear Mama” to draft, only a phone propped against a mug during her dialysis. The Nile and Normandy assume a journey with a shore. When I try to turn years into visits, the calculator for tallying days, miles, and missed calls just shows what distance costs. Love flows, yes, but caregiving has a schedule.
Three signatures, but only one “Your 3 Grateful Children” at the bottom. Have each child date a separate stanza—May 19, 2020, beside the Nile, Normandy, and monk lines—then tuck them into a foil keepsake archive for family cards and letters before Mama writes her reply in the margin. That missing reply is the step the letter leaves out.