Found

They found her today, curled around a dirty blanket under an overpass. The coroner estimated her age at 78. She had been an aged, unhealthy homeless woman, living on the streets, seeking sustenance from whatever source presented itself. While alive, when seen, most passersby had turned away in disgust; Youths would yell: “Get a job”, or hurl insults at her. But … who was she … who had she been …? --=< * >=- She abandoned her dreams at an early age, and elected to follow the dreams of the man she thought to be her champion and life long companion. More than once she uprooted her life and accompanied him in pursuit of some passionate dream he embraced … and did her best to help him find it. The “star” on which she had hung her hopes and her entire future abandoned her, with their child, in a bus station in Georgia. She was 28 at the time. Wear of the years and hardships had taken their toll on her, both mentally and physically. The times and opportunities had passed in which she could have engaged in furthering her education, and it was these things she had put aside to follow “his” dreams. It was not she who failed, but rather, the “star” she had believed in. The mirror of hope and aspiration she had longingly gazed into when she was fifteen, he had shattered. A lifetime was lost, and its’ shell she wore as tattered rags. She did those things she had to do to survive, and her child, taken from her, was somewhere in the morass of government bureaucracy, assuring she’d never see him again. There were days of solitude where white tracks on her soiled face could be seen from her eyes to her chin, as the legacy of her memories. Her days were filled with foraging. Her eyes had been dulled by disappointment and defeat. Her body was dirty and scarred. Hope to her remained only as a memory of a word of no substance or possibility. She was completely void of any expectations and lived from day to day driven only by the most basic of instincts … it’s what’s left when dreams are callously destroyed. I was too late, but, today, at last I had found my Mom.