First, let me tell you that I love you so much and I only want what’s best for you. Secondly, I want to ask for your forgiveness for letting you down but, son, know that your mother did the best she could after your father left us. I give no apology for your father as I know God will hold him accountable for not handling his responsibility as still realizing he is your father and not staying in your life.

Dear Son:

This is your mother writing you.

Please take time and read this letter and feel where I’m coming from.

First, let me tell you that I love you so much and I only want what’s best for you. Secondly, I want to ask for your forgiveness for letting you down but, son, know that your mother did the best she could after your father left us. I give no apology for your father as I know God will hold him accountable for not handling his responsibility as still realizing he is your father and not staying in your life.

But, right now, hear me out as I sit here in my bedroom at 2:30 a.m., still up and not able to sleep until you come in the door. Son, at seventeen, you should be home in bed, resting to get up for school the next morning however you’re out in the streets.

Mother’s Day is fast approaching and, sitting here, I remember the wonderful time we had last Mother’s Day. You took me out to dinner, gave me a beautiful card which I read so often, and you gave me twelve roses, one for each month of the year. You gave me expensive chocolate candy and five hundred dollars cash. But, with all this on Mother’s Day, you promised me… your exact words, “Moma, I’m going to stop selling drugs. I’m going to get out of the gang and stop hanging with the wrong people. Moma, I gonna even stop smoking weed, go back to school and get my high school diploma.”

Remember all that son? You even told me that you were going to stop making babies but what really brought tears to my eyes was when you said, “Moma, I’m gonna get back into church.” Oh, how I cried to hear that. I believed everything you said, son, and that was the best Mother’s Day I ever had with you.

Well, son, a year later I ask you a question which is “where are you at with all these promises?” You have not signed up for school, still selling drugs, in a gang, smoking weed, unemployed and have a fourth child on the way by a different girl. You’re full of so much anger toward your father as well as anger toward any man or any authority. I’m so afraid for you son.

Your probation officer called and said he was tired of giving you chances to report to him once a month and, if you missed this month, he was going to make sure the court sent you to prison for probation violation. Son, your mother’s heart is bleeding with pain day in and day out. It’s taking a toll on me and aging me one day at time. When I’m at work and my phone rings, I jump in fear, hoping it’s not a phone call in regards to you in a police station or at the morgue. At night, when I hear strange sounds, I rush to the door to see if it’s you falling on the front steps shot up like your best friend whose mother met him on the steps as he died in her arms from a drug deal gone bad.

Son, I can’t continue to live like this. You’re my only son and it hurts me a great deal but I just have to give you over to the Lord. I’m not giving up on you son but I have to be there for your kids if you continue to live like this and end up dead. I have to respect your choices but you have to understand the consequences that come with the life of crime and the mean streets. I will continue to pray for you son but, if I continue to worry like this, I won’t be around because worry will kill me.

Now, son, on this Mother’s Day which is three days from now don’t give me no flowers, candy, money and don’t even give me a Mother’s Day Card. Last year, I felt so guilty when you gave that five hundred dollars to me but I used it on your children whom you’ve done nothing for since they were born. I told them all the cloths came from you.

You want to know what will make me the happiest mother this Mother’s Day?

STOP THE MADNESS AND, IF NOTHING ELSE, START LIVING FOR THESE BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN YOU’VE BROUGHT INTO THE WORLD. SON, NO CHILD SHOULD HAVE TO GO SEE THEIR FATHER IN PRISON OR AT THE GRAVEYARD AT YOUR AGE.

Son, remember, I love you and God loves you. Now, it’s time you start loving yourself. What else can your mother say?

Signed,

Mom

To my readers: The son never arrived home that night. He was in a coma for three days at a local hospital from a gun shot wound to the head from gang violence and passed away.

Hopefully this letter from this mother sent to me will save at least one of our lost sons who might not know how they are hurting someone who loves them so much like their MOTHER.

Pass this letter on...

You can e-mail Bishop Moultry at bishopspeaks@aol.com or write him at In Touch for