Mom (R) Aunt Madeline (L) me at age five
As I went for a walk last week my mother’s beautiful face over the years kept coming to mind. She died in 2003 so it’s been a long time since we were together in person. She had dementia in her final years, lost to me even before her death. I want to cry about it now, but I don’t seem to have any tears left.
I remember Mom saying that to me in her late years. “I’ve cried and cried over so many things,” she said, her blue eyes clouded with sadness, “I just don’t have any more tears.”
Now that I am close to the age when she passed, I’m thinking about her many sufferings. Mom lost her mother when Mom was just 18. Then she had to step up and manage the house for her dad, younger sister, and two brothers.
She lived by a strict religious code that suppressed her thoughts and feelings and kept her from freely expressing the talents she had. My dad, whom she loved (and he adored her) was difficult to live with. He was an adult child of an alcoholic in a family of 13 children with a mother who was ill his entire childhood so the effects of that early life played out during their marriage and our family life.
She took in family members who needed a place to stay, including her father who lived with us for 25 years. She served the church, became my Girl Scout leader, and put up with my father’s long work hours and his requirements that we all come to the dinner table freshly bathed and dressed well (even though he often didn’t make it home on time to join us).
We always had plenty–food, clothing, shelter, a car and summer vacations but I often felt my mother’s tension as she navigated being a wife, a mother, a daughter, and an obedient servant to God as the church defined God.
She had a mental breakdown when I was eighteen, so like her at that age, I too, had to step up for our family until she returned from the hospital after six weeks of shock treatments.
Mom took up golf at age 40 and loved it. Her smile returned and she enjoyed sharing stories about her golfing friends and her unpredictable scores!
By the end, before she broke a hip and started to decline mentally, she told me she’d had enough of life, of everything. She was worn out. She didn’t know what to think, what to believe, what to do––but simply let things be.
Wow! When I think of that now I realize she had arrived at the very place where perhaps we all want to land–letting things be as they are, trusting God and welcoming God’s hand when God opens the gates of Paradise and ushers in faithful servants whose suffering will be no more.
I miss you, Mom, and I thank you for all that you poured into me even though I didn’t always appreciate it at the time.
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Do you have a ‘mom memory’ story? Please share if you’re willing.
There can be a downside too, as my friend declared during our chat. She had a Zoom conversation with family members recently and realized her ‘social skills’ had gotten rusty over the past year. Certain people in her family annoyed her when they shared their opinions without hesitation. Being cut off by the younger members, rude jokes, and intolerant attitudes bugged her to the point that she wanted to leave the meeting.
