A Mother's Day Reflection

Mother’s Day was on Sunday and it has been nearly 21 years since the baton passed from when I used to celebrate my own mother on this springtime holiday, to being the woman whose children celebrate her. My mother died on a summer day in mid-July, nearly a lifetime ago, three days before my birthday. I first saw her laid out in the casket on my birthday, her first born, wondering why the coincidence, why on this day of all days were we burying her, at the time of year when she brought me into the world? I never got an answer to that question, but I’ve long since settled the issue in my soul. It just is, and I count my passing years alongside the number of years she’s been in heaven.

Some of her grandchildren weren’t born when she died – my youngest sister was pregnant with her first child when mom passed away, her body ravaged by the disease of pancreatic cancer. And so in the lifetimes of my sister’s three children, none of them ever knew the woman who nurtured us and died entirely too young. They know “Grandma Margie” only from pictures and those long-ago family home movies.

After she died, I found myself looking closely at my face in the mirror each day, searching for signs of how I looked like her. It was part of the grieving process, wanting to hang onto any piece of her that I could. Most of my life, I seemed to resemble more my father, up until the past 10 years or so. As I’ve aged and near the age she was when she died, I see her in fleeting expressions, and it makes me gasp just a little. I see her in my joys and in my sadnesses, remembering what she looked like when I’d watch her live those times.

Because she died before I’d experienced much of what it was to be a parent and an “adult” handling life, I didn’t know what she thought or how she viewed the world. I was too busy being a young mother myself, raising children, working full-time, working out life with their father, while she lived in another state, a thousand miles away.

Now I look back, having gone through the stages she did, and see what she must have understood about the world. I feel what she must have felt about life back then. Her children growing up, no longer tiny underfoot, needing this, needing that from her allowed her to spread her wings and indulge her wants and pleasure. She had more alone time with my father, as well. Our lives weren’t always perfect, but the good times with family greatly outweighed the bad.

It’s an odd time, to become as old as one’s parents. My father has since passed away, too, just two years ago. He was lucky enough to find love a second time and remarried, to a woman who my mother knew and liked, and actually hinted about to him in her last days.

In reflecting on this Mother’s Day, I value the blessings my mother gave to me. Faith in God, love of music, appreciation for art and creativity, the importance of working hard, working well, being nice to people, staying strong in difficulties, doing for friends and being close to family – that was who my mother was at her core, and I celebrate her. Those are the lessons she taught me before she died.

I can only hope she’s looking down from heaven and thinks I learned her lessons well.

Happy Mother’s Day, Margaret Louise. With love from your daughter, now a Texan.