Belated Mother's Day

Dear Mother,

You passed from this life to the next twenty-seven years ago, and much “water has passed over the dam” since then (an expression you often used). If you could return to spend a few minutes with me on this Mother’s Day I would be sure to make them count. 

I would sit face-to-face, knee-to-knee, and hold your arthritic fingers in mine.  I would thank you for using those hands to knit my sweaters and hats and gloves, to sew my school clothes on the green SewHandy portable machine (vintage 1931) that vibrated the drop-leaf table on the porch while singing its own melodic hum.

I would thank you for picking blueberries with me in the swampy bog on the lake’s west shore. I would applaud you for driving me to the library every week in the summer to borrow books that expanded my world and caused me to fall in love with the written word.

I would validate you. I would tell you I understand how you were caught off-guard by the timing of a third pregnancy that ushered me into your life, and yet you offered me - the unexpected child - whatever was within you to give. Any perceived lack or gap in our relationship existed because of your own unhealed wounds rather than intentional deprivation. 

I would tell you I love you, and would hope to hear the words echo. We were not a verbally affirming family, so that would be the fist time for both of us. I would watch your eyes to see if you believed me.  If they remained empty, I would repeat myself again and again, slowly. I love you.  I love you.  I love you.  Perhaps then I would see a glimmer. I would thank you for acting out of love for me, for sacrificing for me.

I would explain how I look back on your awful depression differently now, especially the deepest pits (we both know there were many).  From this vantage point I can see beyond so many cluttered memories.  I realize how the inner weight crushed and crumbled your middle-aged heart and seared my young one, leaving dark scars within us both that could be healed only by Almighty Love.  I would tell you I sought distance from your suffering (rather than you), and shielded myself emotionally out of desperate self-protection rather than disdain.

I would ask for your forgiveness, and confess my lack of knowledge and understanding.  I would apologize for being insensitive and self-centered, for ignoring your needs and desires.

I would also forgive you for abandoning me emotionally. I would pour out grace and mercy like a flood to cover every relational crack and void, filling and binding the divinely fashioned joints between us until they promised to hold forever.

I would celebrate you - extol your unique and creative beauty of soul, inquisitive mind, strong physical body, and dutiful character.   I would tell you how hard it was to watch dementia beat your mind to a pulp as the ultimate robber of your final days.

Then I would hold your hands tighter and look more deeply into your eyes – if only we could both bear to do so, for it would be the very first time for such a profound encounter. I would weep silent tears of understanding and reconciliation and gratitude and mercy and love that are beyond words, for these are the relational connections handed down from our Father by His grace.  They are His bonds that we share as mother and daughter.

Then I would dismiss you to return to the kingdom beyond, with a vision to join you when the time is right. And I would be thankfully mended deep down, healed of the gaping void of things left unsaid.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mother. 

With love,

Beth

P.S. I recently had your SewHandy machine serviced, and plan to use it to teach your great-granddaughters how to sew.