Mother’s Day – After Years of Dread I Can Finally Deal With It

Mother’s Day has come and gone.  I used to be glad when it was over.  Not anymore.

My mother died 60 years ago. She had just turned 40. She had Leukemia, and if you had Leukemia 60 years ago, you were “toast.”

We were kids when Mom died. At fifteen, I was the oldest of five. My sister and brothers remembered details about her, such as the softness of her hair, her laugh, how she loved cherry vanilla ice cream, or pulling the shopping cart to the A&P. As for me, I had nothing except the information they had to share.

For some reason, I have only a few vague memories of her. So it followed that there was an emptiness that erupted inside me during the Mother’s Day celebration. Factor in all those card and flower commercials, and it became downright sad. Praise the Lord, I am now over that.

Incomplete Grief

I was told that I was traumatized by her death and involuntarily blocked her from my mind. I wondered – could that be true?

How could that be true when I have experienced death taking my closest family members from me a number of times?  Grandma died in my arms on a cold, rainy night when I was 18. My dad passed away 55 years ago, and my two youngest brothers are long gone. I was married and widowed, married again, and was widowed again. And I was the father of a stillborn daughter.

In every instance I was always fortified by my Catholic faith. It held me up and allowed me to move through the grief process and learn to accept what happened.  But with my Mom, that process never completed itself.

I finally came to understand why I have been “stuck in the mud” with my Mom’s sudden passing, even though it was long ago. I was selfish. The thought of what must have been going through her mind as she lay dying at the age of 39 never occurred to me. It was always about me and how MY Mom died. I shoved grief to the curb and busied myself feeling sorry for ME.

This was the reason for my decades-old problem. Therein was the cause of my emptiness. It was never about Mom. I felt sorry for myself when she died.  And I kept feeling sorry for myself, year after year after year. Mother’s Day was my annual reinforcement of self-pity. This was a cross given to me that I refused to bear.

A Phone Call

I needed help to understand all this.  And finally, it came.  Out of the clear blue, not too long ago, my daughter Mary called me.  During the conversation, Mary said, “Hey dad, do you realize I’m going to be 39 on my next birthday?”

Talk about being hit by lightning. My own daughter was going to be the same age as my mother was when she was slowly being killed by an insidious, no holds barred, relentless disease. I had never thought of my Mom as a 39-year-old woman with five kids. I thought of her as my Mom, who died on ME. How pathetic is that?

Mary, who also happens to look a lot like the grandma she never knew, had only asked me a simple question. She could not have known the power that was in it. She had no idea that at that moment it removed the veil from my clouded “Mom world” and set me on my journey to discover the woman and person who was also my mother. My prayers were being answered.

Awakening

Following decades of self-pity, I began to quietly ponder about this woman who carried me in her womb, who nursed me, fed me, bathed me, held me, and hugged me. She did the same thing for my siblings through illnesses such as mumps, measles, and chickenpox (all of which I have no memory), who cleaned, washed, and ironed clothes, cooked, shopped, and even worked part-time. I cannot imagine how she felt as she prepared to leave her family behind while facing death.  It must have been awful and terrifying for her.

How did she manage to hold her one-and-a-half-year-old son on her lap and look at him without going hysterical, knowing soon she would be gone? How did she handle thinking about her six-year-old son, missing his front teeth, to whom she would never give a sweet hug again?  She had a ten-year-old in fourth grade, and he always needed Mom to help him with his homework. Would his dad help him? Probably not. Dad was lousy at spelling and grammar.

And of course, there was my sister, Mom’s “little” girl. But she was 13 already. She was growing up. She would need her Mom, to talk to about woman things.

How did Mom bare holding onto the knowledge that her children would soon be motherless? What did she say to our dad, her husband and lover, as they lay together in bed, in the dark of night waiting for the inevitable as their five kids slept?

God Bless All Moms

This past Sunday morning at Mass, on Mother’s Day, the priest talked about mothers, living and deceased. This year I was proud of the God-loving, faithful, kind, and courageous woman that was MY Mom. I may only have a few scattered memories of her but it doesn’t matter anymore. It was never about poor me.  It was about her. I was such a jerk not to see it.

My MOM was a great Catholic wife, mother, and woman who, besides all the other things she did, made sure we prayed a Rosary every night. Her strength was in her faith. And it shrouded her very being.

On Mother’s Day this year I thanked God for that phone call from Mary.  I also thanked Him for my Mom. And I cried too. Then I asked my Mom to say a prayer for her oldest child, who still could use her help.

To each and every one of the loving, caring Moms out there, God bless you all, and I pray you all had a Happy Mother’s Day.