Promise to my mom

I was talking to my mom on the phone while I was doing dishes. I like to multitask when I talk on the phone, a little habit I have. I don’t talk to my mom very regularly, we keep up from time to time, there goes months where we talk 5 times over the phone, there’s months where we don’t talk at all. No real reason other than we just talk when we find the time or when one of us picks up the phone and calls and the other answers.

My mom was telling me about a family she had assisted a few weeks back, the family gets together every remembrance day of their loved one and prays a novena, a 9-day prayer for their deceased.

I am no longer religious, but I am a partial contributor to my mom’s religious journey and her religion is very important to her. So as I stood there washing dishes and listening to her tell me about how much she cherished helping this family complete their novena, I made her a promise. That if she were to die before me I would do a novena for her on every anniversary for the rest of my life.

I may find myself regretting making this promise some day. She accepted my promise, joking that if I ever break it she will come and pull my feet in the middle of the night, and we never want to disturb those at rest. So here it is, my promise to my mom.