Minutes after his Rozelle apartment building exploded in flames last year, twenty seven year old Chris Noble sent his last ever text message. It was 4.08am. He almost certainly knew he was going to die.
His message was to his mother, Liz Noble, and it contained three words.
I love you.
Victims of the Sydney Siege in the Lindt café sent text messages to their mothers. And we know that Eddie Justice, a thirty year old victim of the Orlando shooting massacre, sent his last texts to his mother.
Mommy I love you, he wrote.
We have long known that dying adults think of their mothers. On the battlefields of Normandy, fallen soldiers were heard to calling out, not for their wives, or their girlfriends, or even to God, but to their mothers. As veteran Frank Devito recalled, “The last word they say before they die is ‘Momma’.”
It is heartbreakingly sad, but strangely beautiful, that our last thoughts are so often of our mums. No matter how old we are, no matter who else is in our lives, the maternal bond remains absolutely paramount.
Orlando shooting victim Eddie Justice, 30, sent a final text to his mother saying “Mommy I love you.”
As a baby, we learn to feel that our mother can protect us from anything. She is the first to hold us, to feed us, to nurture us, to give us love. She is the one we run to for protection in times of danger, and seek comfort from in times of pain.
And though we realize over the course of our life that our mother is just human, and cannot always keep us safe, that sense of mother as comfort remains embedded in our soul. And so she is still the one we instinctively reach out for when we are stripped down to our most primitive selves. In our most extreme moment of stress, when we are faced with death, she is still the one we call to for comfort.
As a mother of three children, I am deeply moved by the text messages from dying adults to their mothers. My kids still live at home, and it is easy for me to see how dependent they are on my care.
But as I watch them grow up, and contemplate them leaving home, I wonder what our relationship will look like. They will learn to drive, they will learn to cook, they will learn to fend for themselves, and I won’t have the day to day significance in their lives.
I need to remember that motherhood isn’t about meals or laundry or the minutiae of our days. It is about the unconditional love that only I as a mother can give to my children. Love without limitations or conditions, love that is blind to behavior, love that will transcend distance or time.
My children will love other people, have friendships and romantic relationships, and even have children of their own. But they will never experience unconditional love from anyone else in their lives.
I feel so devastated for those mothers who received those terrible tests, in the Orlando massacre, in the Sydney siege, in the Rozelle fire. Still, their children knew they were there with their unconditional love. I hope they can derive comfort from that.
