A reader's story: A Mother's Supplemental Daughter

A few summers ago the town's market was a leisurely pace for my book signings compared to the previous year which was accompanied by a cramped hand to the many copies I wrote messages in.

Although traffic that time was sparse, my emotions were compelled by two tragedies of new readers resorting to When Words Flow to fuse their grief further.

Here is one of those stories.

I call this one

A MOTHER'S SUPPLEMENTAL DAUGHTER

A woman stepped by my booth gazing intently at the banner that curtained behind me. She stepped forward, took a copy to her hand and switched through its pages.

She uttered her thoughts, explaining how a book like this would be a great gift for her daughter’s friend who has succumbed to a great deal of grief.

Within a count of only a few seconds, she started to utter some words but then her cries stuttered what she wanted to say next.

She grasped for a deep breath to share that her 19-year-old daughter and her friend were beginning their adventurous paths by visiting Thailand only a season previous. While there, they were renting a motorcycle to scoot around. The mother’s daughter didn’t have an international motor vehicle license. So, she became the back passenger of her friend’s bike.

While meandering the streets joyfully, an unfortunate incident appeared perishing the life of the mother’s daughter.

The daughter’s friend left distraught and puzzled.

The friend left to wonder why the incident took her friend and not her along or for the roles to be reversed.

With an estranged family of her own in Europe and a deep pain of grief, the daughter’s mother and the remaining of her family were welcoming the adoption of the friend into their household.

As the friend was preparing to move to Canada, the daughter’s mother decided to assemble gifts for her arrival to her new home; including a copy of When Words Flow.

Inside I wrote a message dedicated to the daughter’s friend I felt was needed to nurture her pains with an undeniable comfort not only from what I wrote, but to the arrival in her new country, home, and family.

I cannot recall what I said since seasons have now passed, but I do remember acknowledging that the daughter’s presence mended an additional daughter for her mother and a loving family for her friend. As an adhesive to supplement their lives moreover in honourable love for the daughter.

"an adhesive to supplement their lives moreover in honourable love for the daughter"

The most intriguing stories are the hands that hold my book.

You best know that I gave the mother a tight and lengthy hug to shed some tears of my own.

Check out the playlist I created in remembrance of the reader's I've met.