The Need for a Mother

All three of the Doyle boys as well as Kenya demonstrate a palpable need for their mother, a need that supersedes all other needs before it. Bernadette’s oldest son, Sullivan, still thinks of his mother daily, more specifically, he recalls his mother’s suffering the last days of her life. He had “lit a thousand candles” (253); she was the one “to whom his enormous love and devotion had no claim” (153). Being in Boston reminds him of her so much that he runs away to Africa to try to escape the pain: “…everything reminds me of my mother. That was reason enough to go” (149). He also knows that he has made mistakes in his life because he did not have Bernadette: “If his mother had lived, the chain of events would never have begun. There never would have been an accident. He...