Mother's Gone

The sullen man, sitting in a diner's booth, quickly gulped down his milk. He had been coming here since childhood.
He remembered the smell of his mother's cigarettes when she would squeeze next to him and kiss his cheek, right where he sat now.
He reluctantly recalled her funeral and wished for a final goodbye.
"I'm sorry," he whispered and slowly swallowed the remaining milk in his glass the way mother always instructed him to.