Three Little Words

My Mother never said I love you until the day she thought she might die. She was lying in the gurney crying. Not sobbing but just enough that I could see her holding back, trying to articulate things she hadn't said all these years in just a few tears. I had seen these tears before. First, the day our German Shorthaired Pointer died. Then, at my Grandfathers funeral. Maybe I was going to die. They were rolling her out of the room and she muttered "I love you." That was it.