For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal live. John 3:16 (NIV)

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Mother's Day is almost here and all that remains of my mother are memories. I'm not going to flower those memories with declarations of my flawlessly perfect mother...I would not be writing the truth.

On the whole, my mother was a good caring woman with a knack for expressing her sense of humor in the form of poetry. She was also a seamstress and avid horticulturist. She was faithful to God in that she remained steadfast to her Catholic beliefs through thirty years after divorce (28 of those years she was married to my stepfather). My biological father disappeared when I was a baby. He left my mother destitute with three children. I was nine years old when we discovered he was alive and I was thirty-eight when we received word of his death. During all those years between we rarely knew where he was. Oftentimes, it appeared as if he chose to pop out of the woodwork every so many years for the sole purpose of torturing my mother. I was 30 when Mom applied for a dispensation from the Church and received it within six weeks. My stepfather--'My Dad' because for all intents and purposes he was my father--Dad remarried Mom by a priest as quickly as those arrangements could be made. Mom was a practicing Catholic again but all those years of raising her children in the Church and of having to explain her actions time and again to those who didn't understand--or tried to condemn--had taken a heavy tole.

Mom was diagnosed with clinical depression in her later years. I can attest that depression began when I was a small child. Mom suffered from arthritis. She had a couple cancer scares but both times surgery removed the tumors and the cancer threat was erased. There were other physical problems and the pain from dealing with those illnesses added to her depression.

Through those years I remember a mother who was always, always there for my older brother and sister and myself. She worked out of our home off and on while I was growing up and in a factory during my teenage years. So I suppose I was of the first generation of 'latch key kids'. Not that it mattered. Mom always found time to talk over my dilemmas and to find solutions for my problems--even though we didn't always agree.

In fact, the older I grew the more Mom and I fought. Most of the time those disagreements were momentary spats that blew over as quickly as they blew in. There were two times, unfortunately, that Mom really, really hurt me. The first was over my choice not to attend nurses training. Mom decided nursing was the ONLY thing I could do. She was wrong.

The second time occurred after the death of my first husband. I met and married my current (and the love of my life) husband within a year. My first husband was disabled for six years before his death. He spent eight months of the last year of his life in the hospital. So his death was more a relief than a shock but my mother decided I was making a terrible mistake to marry again--especially so soon. We argued over it A LOT. I'm sure I hurt her as much as she hurt me. At least ten years passed before Mom stopped looking for signs that my marriage was failing.

Her attitude hurt terribly--especially when my husband and I endured the birth-deaths of two baby boys and the premature birth of a healthy son who is now 25 years old. My oldest son (now 34) was five when his father died. My second husband raised my oldest son as his own. I have other memories of Mom--happy memories--but I've never forgotten the arguments. I doubt I ever will.

During the last decade of her life Mom came to realize her mistake. She never apologized for the things she said when we argued but neither did I. She did ask me why I refused to go to nursing school. I told her I was not meant to be a nurse. For me, that was the true and correct answer but Mom didn't understand. Nursing was a dream she was never able to fulfill and she simply was not capable of accepting the fact that not every woman seeks a career in nursing. I understand that because it's difficult for me to believe that many people have no desire to place their thoughts in written word.

We never discussed exactly why she thought I was wrong to marry again. Although, she often told me she feared that I would end up divorced and suffer as she did. I resented her inability to accept that I was capable of knowing my own feelings in order to direct my own life. Our arguments injured each other so much in later years we avoided any reference toward them. I also know Mom's attitude was not caused by dislike or mistrust of my husband. In the last years of her life Mom began to spoil him just as she did my sons. He snickers over that now. I could seethe about it but I would rather laugh. I know no matter what Mom did or said she did out of love. Hers was a domineering kind of love in that she felt she was better able to make life altering decisions for me instead of trusting me to make those decisions myself. Sometimes her love was so smothering I had to distance myself from her for days, even weeks, just to be able to breathe. The only good to come from that is that it has taught me how NOT to be with my adult sons.

I would rather remember the nurturing love that sought to remedy Mom's faults and misdeeds with tenderness. Even if that meant she served my husband butter beans every time we ate at her house because she knew he likes them. I hate butter beans with such a passion I refuse to even keep cans of them in my pantry!

When dark memories creep on my mind I force myself to remember the good times. I think of the mother with whom I shared a deep love of reading and writing. I remember the mother whose sewing techniques were far better than my Home Economics teacher's were. I think about the mother my teenage girlfriends used to love to visit with and the times my sons greeted me (after a weekend spent with their grandparents) with excited words like, "Do you know what Grandma did now?"; "You should have heard Grandma when...!"; "Grandma took out her false teeth and scared....!"; "Grandma wrote another crazy poem about..." I remember the Mom-Grandma who insisted my sons give me gifts on special occasions. She helped them buy most of those gifts. And, I remember her spoken delight over the gifts we gave her.

Those are the beautiful memories.

Mom died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage in 1999. It was as if God said, "It's time to come home now." and Mom ran to meet Him.

I choose to think of her death that way. It erases the shock that overpowered all of us throughout her funeral and for a long time afterward.

Mom's death was the hardest on Dad, I think. He had long suffered physical problems of is own. That he suffered some form of dementia became very evident after Mom was gone. After nearly 50 years of marriage, it was as if he had lost his lifeline. When Mom died Dad quite literally went to pieces. He died in 2002.

It makes no difference that nearly ten years have passed. It's not only on Mother's Day that I miss my Mom. Even one more argument with her would be better than the silence when I call out, "Hey, Mom! Guess what's going on now!"

Thoughts from the Farm Wife's Chronicles

http://www.maryelizabethfricke.com

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