Finding Contentment

My mother, myself

08:11 AM, Monday, May 14, 2007 .. Posted in Family .. 2 comments .. Link

I realize I'm a day late for Mother's Day, but I didn't get to post yesterday. Yesterday I was busy at my mother-in-law's house and visiting my own mother's grave with a bunch of flowers in hand.

As I stood beside her grave and reflected on the ways she went about mothering her children, I had a realization. I am very much like her, and I don't mind that fact anymore. My mother was "old-fashioned" and strict on her kids in today's modern society. We didn't always see eye to eye and had many spats - especially in my teenage years.

Mom didn't homeschool her nine children, and she didn't bake her own bread - but she had an idea that the old ways were the best ways. She raised us much as she was raised, and when I married and had my first child I did everything possible NOT to be like her.

Over the years I came to realize that spoiling kids and teaching them the ways of how to get along in the corporate world wasn't what I should be doing. And now, I deeply regret those early years, wishing I had done things differently - the way my mother had.

This is my second Mother's Day without Mom. She passed away in January of 2006 at the age of 68 from Alzheimer's. And more than anything, I deeply regret the fact that I never told her that I appreciate the values, traditions and love of the Lord she tried to instill in me. Oh, I always gave her things on Mother's Day and told her she meant a lot to me, but I never sat down on a normal day and told her the truth. That it turns out I am now teaching my kids those same things, and that I couldn't thank her enough for leading me in that direction. I tried to have a similar conversation with her shortly before she passed away. But as she lay in the hospital bed and looked at me with blank eyes, I despaired that she even knew what I was saying.

It was about a week before she died that the pallative care coordinator came into her room at the hospital where I sat by her bed and asked to speak with me. Their original assessement was wrong, she said. Mom didn't have the year or so they thought she had left, but instead would only be with us about three more months.

I didn't say a word or make a sound, but the tears started flowing down my cheeks. My mother, who most of the time didn't even know where she was, took my hand. Then she pointed at the palliative care coordinator, put her made look on and said to the coordinator, "My daughter. Leave alone. Bad, you're bad."

As I write this with tears in my eyes and remember those last words of my mother's and how, even on her dying bed she realized I was upset and tried to protect me from grief, I can only pray that the Lord will allow me to teach and protect my children for many years to come.