Mother’s Day

With Mother’s Day about two weeks away, I am busy making flower pots to celebrate the women in my life. I lost my mother 29 years ago on April 30th. I have always found Mother’s Day difficult since then. She passed away in a lot of discomfort and pain and she has never known my children, who they are or the people they have become. I love celebrations and I love spending time with my children and my friends. I think about my mother most days – she loved her grandchildren, she loved to sew and cook and celebrate holidays. She did NOT take care of her health, so I have altered that for myself. She gave of herself in so many different ways – she was a Scout Leader, a summer camp director, she catered weddings and sewed dresses for people and raised a family with literally no money. We grew up on a small farm, she canned meat and vegetables and fruit, froze meat and vegetables and fruit. We had a huge garden and we also grew crops for sale like pumpkin, squash and cucumbers. She sewed most of the clothes we wore and she often worked outside the home because money was needed. I always feel that my mother had a difficult life. Her life as a child was very difficult. Her father passed away when she was 5 and her little sister was killed when she was 10. Her mother re-married and it was a difficult union. She made the best of her life, she had friends and she always gave to others. Her death was a tragedy, at 57 of cancer. My mother was brave and she never let anything stand in her way or stop her. She stood up for those less fortunate (and that is saying a lot). She was extremely generous and often was not treated as graciously as she should have been. I am heartbroken that she did not see my children grow up and that my father grew so bitter and sad after she died. She was not perfect but, we don’t talk about those things after someone has passed.

Oscar Wilde says, “Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.” I have long stopped judging my parents and I have definitely forgiven them because without that forgiveness it would have been impossible to be a parent myself. I shifted from judgment to curiousity about my parents and their lives and that made all the difference. Everyone’s parents got things wrong. We cannot force insight or change onto anyone but ourselves. There is no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.

Nothing brings up intense emotion quite like parenting, other than thinking about a parent who has passed. So, I celebrate Mother’s Day by giving to other women and celebrating their lives and spending time, in so much gratitude, with my own children.

This is my parents on their wedding day, my mother was 17 years old and my father was 19 years old.

Written by Pam