Mother’s Day

I wake late in the morning on my living room sofa with twenty pounds of cat sprawled across my chest and the sun trying to poke its bright fingers into my eyes.  Even though half of my body is exposed, I am incredibly warm.  Feverish.  I have been battling the flu for a full day now.  My mother has been gone for thirty years.  Tomorrow will mark exactly four years since my wife passed.  All of that is on my chest alongside the cat.

--Mitchell Hegman