Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul Read Free Page A

uninterested in my upcoming graduation, the senior-class play and the prom—events that I had worked on and looked forward to. I even considered staying home to attend college instead of going away as I had planned because it felt safer.
    My mother, in the midst of her own grief, wouldn’t hear of me missing out on any of these things. The day before my father died, she and I had gone shopping for a prom dress and had found a spectacular one—yards and yards of dotted Swiss in red, white and blue. Wearing it made me feel like Scarlett O’Hara. But it was the wrong size, and when my father died the next day, I forgot all about the dress.
    My mother didn’t. The day before the prom, I found that dress waiting for me—in the right size. It was draped majestically over the living room sofa, presented to me artistically and lovingly. I may not have cared about having a new dress, but my mother did.
    She cared how we children felt about ourselves. She imbued us with a sense of the magic in the world, and she gave us the ability to see beauty even in the face of adversity.
    In truth, my mother wanted her children to see them selves much like the gardenia—lovely, strong, perfect, with an aura of magic and perhaps a bit of mystery.
    My mother died when I was 22, only 10 days after I was married. That was the year the gardenias stopped coming.
    Marsha Arons

Words from the Heart
    T he bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
    Harriet Beecher Stowe
    Most people need to hear those “three little words.” Once in a while, they hear them just in time.
    I met Connie the day she was admitted to the hospice ward, where I worked as a volunteer. Her husband, Bill, stood nervously nearby as she was transferred from the gurney to the hospital bed. Although Connie was in the final stages of her fight against cancer, she was alert and cheerful. We got her settled in. I finished marking her name on all the hospital supplies she would be using, then asked if she needed anything.
    “Oh yes,” she said, “would you please show me how to use the TV? I enjoy the soaps so much and I don’t want to get behind on what’s happening.” Connie was a romantic. She loved soap operas, romance novels and movies with a good love story. As we became acquainted, she confided how frustrating it was to be married 32 years to a man who often called her “a silly woman.”
    “Oh, I know Bill loves me,” she said, “but he has never been one to say he loves me, or send cards to me.” She sighed and looked out the window at the trees in the courtyard. “I’d give anything if he’d say ‘I love you,’ but it’s just not in his nature.”
    Bill visited Connie every day. In the beginning, he sat next to the bed while she watched the soaps. Later, when she began sleeping more, he paced up and down the hall way outside her room. Soon, when she no longer watched television and had fewer waking moments, I began spending more of my volunteer time with Bill.
    He talked about having worked as a carpenter and how he liked to go fishing. He and Connie had no children, but they’d been enjoying retirement by traveling, until Connie got sick. Bill could not express his feelings about the fact that his wife was dying.
    One day, over coffee in the cafeteria, I got him on the subject of women and how we need romance in our lives; how we love to get sentimental cards and love letters.
    “Do you tell Connie you love her?” I asked (knowing his answer), and he looked at me as if I was crazy.
    “I don’t have to,” he said. “She knows I do!”
    “I’m sure she knows,” I said, reaching over and touching his hands—rough, carpenter’s hands that were gripping the cup as if it were the only thing he had to hang onto—”but she needs to hear it, Bill. She needs to hear what she has meant to you all these years. Please think about it.”
    We walked back to Connie’s room. Bill disappeared inside, and I left to visit