When I was asked to write a few brief words about my mother, I thought, yeah, this will be hard. How can I be sure I will be able to write enough, enough to convey how I feel about my mother, about her life and her death. I was certain such a profound subject would be too deep to be broached with great paragraphs, that I would only be able to write a few words that would fall far short of their intended purpose. Yet now, as I confront the vast store of memories and emotions I hold for my mother, I find trouble keeping them adequately brief.

My mother, Miss Margy, used to embarrass me as a teenager. When we would go shopping, or to the movies, she would inevitably see at least one child she was teaching or had taught. Equally inevitably, she would make a fuss over them, remembering every detail of their personality and their lives, speaking to them as she would have my brother and me at whatever age the child happened to be. It was not until I reached the latter years of high school, when I saw her treating people fifteen and twenty years old the same way: as her children. She was proud of every single accomplishment of anyone she came in contact with. My mother loved as no one I have ever met loved. She taught me to forgive until one cannot forgive anymore, and then to pray until you can. My mother taught me it was always more important to hold the moral high-ground than to enjoy the frivolous and passing pleasures of revenge. I have not always followed her example, but than again neither has anyone else I have ever met. Its like I said, she loved in a way that no one else I have ever met has loved.

When I was a child, I was sick. I don't mean to say I was sick occasionally. Nor do I mean to infer that I was sick frequently. I was sick as long as I can remember. I would wake up at night, unable to move with terror of the nightmares of werewolves that lived on even in waking due to my fevers, terrified of what I knew lay in wait, the terror only a child who understands his own mortality knows. And so my mother would sing. My mother would sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow to me for hours, singing and singing until finally I was able to rest, to find sleep. Her music was taught me how to sleep. When I would go to church, I would sit restlessly waiting to hear my mother sing, finding sometimes that it was the only part of the service that I would hear. I would listen to her sing with a power and strength that comes only from divine influence. My mother would sing for God. It was through my mother that I came to understand religion, that religion wasn't meant to be a way of showing off, but rather a manner of taking everything you love and need and crave and fear and giving it to God, a way of trusting and glorifying and crying out all in one. She taught me that art was meant to communicate, always to God and men, always both simultaneously. My mother made my brother a musician and, quite accidently, made me an artist. My mother would sing for the rich or the poor, for young and the old, and always, always for herself and God. There is a lesson in that, I think.

My mother told me I was like her father. I think that is the finest compliment I ever received. You see, the person she respected the most in the world was her father, a simple man, a good man, a man who sought to culture himself and those around him, a man who sought to quietly do what was right. If I have any characteristic of Dr. Gatherum, a man I never met, it is to no small measure because of him.

When I was a boy, my mother would take me every year to homecoming at her alma mater, little Emory & Henry College. My mother loved that school like a second home, and would spend the rest of her life serving it. I want to go back to Emory & Henry College someday and teach, to spend the rest of my life doing what she did, making her home a better place. It was not until Momma' passed away that I would know that my love was merely an extension, a branch of my mother's love that had grown into me.

My mother wrote me nearly every single day I was in college and graduate school. When my friends betrayed me, when women broke my heart, when I failed to met my own standards in life and scholasticism, there was always a letter there from her, a letter saying, I love you more, Mom. I still open my mailbox or e-mail and expect to find something there. I think I will until the day I die.

My mother attended nearly every single event of significance in my entire life. Award shows, graduations, meetings, services, performances, shows, anything and everything. She would go out of her way to do the slightest thing for my brother and I. My mother taught me humility, courage, loyalty, and love, the finest of all traits. My mother wanted my brother and me to be great. She did not want to be great herself, she wanted us to be great. She believed that people, when treated well, could change the world. Sometimes, I believe that too. Not because of logic, but because of her.

My mother, or should I say my Mommy, touched me in more ways than I could hope to list. In fact, I do not want to list them. They are precious and private, holy like Arc of the Covenant or the Lost Grail. I search for one memory, one that defines her, and I am lost. And so I will tell you a simple, perhaps even silly story, and then end my babbling. When I was a child, my dearest possession was a tiny yellow teddy bear I had named Mimi. I loved that bear like it was my own child, or another brother. Mimi, being a newborn's toy, did not have eyes, but rather was merely a simply two pieces of cloth. When I was five, my Mommy asked me, Eric, she said, what do you want for your birthday.? I replied I wanted her to give Mimi eyes, and I wanted a rainbow birthday cake. She gave me both, and many other things besides, but all I remember are the little button eyes and that perfect cake. I looked up at my Momma, the finest woman I have ever know, and saw, in that moment more joy in her eyes than I have ever seen in anyone else's. And, frankly, I think it may have been the happiest I have ever been. So if you ask me how I feel about my Momma's life, I'll tell you it was the finest lived in this age. And if you ask me how I feel about my Momma's death, I'll just walk away, thinking about when she was happiest, when she was teaching children how to be not just people, but human beings. I miss my Mommy.