"Never Too Late To Say I Love You" by Mary Clements Fisher
– more painful than any punch—and more gutting than guilt
Loving her meant showing up.
Mary Clements Fisher celebrates her current mother/grandmother, sweetheart, student, and writer status in Northern California. Her poetry and prose explore her mad, muddled, and magical moments. She’s published in Quail Belle Magazine, Adanna Journal, Passager Journal, The Weekly Avocet, Personal Story Publishing Project, Prometheus Dreaming Journal, The Closed Eye Open, Capsule Stories, and They Call Us Magazine. Join her @maryfisherwrites and https://maryfisherwrites.squarespace.com/
Author’s Talk
Mary Clements Fisher
Procrastination when it comes to love doesn’t serve anyone well. How many husbands, wives, and children at a graveside wonder if they told their beloved often enough how much they meant to them? I never delivered words of endearment to just anyone but recognized from an early age what it felt like not to hear such words. I hope this story serves its purpose: It’s never too late to say I love you, until it is.
When I started on my sooner-or-later journey for this story, I thought of my mother—a woman who avoided displays of physical affection and found it impossible to say those words to those she held most dear. Her emotional journey with my father and her children taught me well: let my words and my actions become comforting memories before it’s too late.
Though not a psychologist, expressing tenderness based on what we saw, heard, and felt in childhood is an easy concept for me to understand. Thankfully, many cared for me and told me so—my father, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my sister, eventually my husband, my child, my granddaughter, and dear friends. Like my husband’s sweet tease, “There are never enough kisses,” I trust in “Never enough ‘I love yous.’”
Though I rarely doubted my mother loved me, she struggled to say it. Like her, most would say actions speak louder than words. Yet I couldn’t ignore the lack of expression from such a believer in the power of words: Mama was a speaker, a writer, and a published poet. In my youth, her hesitancy to share her affection for my father and her children baffled me. Later I understood her reasons grew from traumas in childhood and feelings of abandonment in her young adult life and marriage. Now I cherish when she finally kissed me and said, “I love you.” My wish for all is to hear those words sooner rather than later from those they love.—Mary Clements Fisher
