Happy Birthday Anniversary, Mom

I recently mentioned that May is like blackout bingo for Birthdays in our family.  Almost everyday we celebrate a different person's birthday.  Today it is my Mom!   

I love the idyllic picture above of children having a picnic in the Good Ole Days with their mother.  Reality was not quite this glamorous  for my ancestors.  For my mom (Josephine) in the photo below is more realistic. She is the five-year-old twin holding her first baby doll. She is photographed here with her twin, Joseph and their older twin siblings, age 10, William and Wilma.  This is just months before their mother would die after the birth of their baby sister Ruby. 1924. My grandmother Ella (Mary Ellen) Evans Reese was the mother of 9 when she died at age 40.  That is so young, in fact crushingly so when I think that our youngest daughter, Laura, is now 40. These little precious children lived barefoot on the dusty, brown prairie in South Dakota. Of what do we ever have cause to complain? 

I have been thinking about my mother more than usual lately. Today marks the 99 year anniversary of her birth. We also just celebrated Mother's Day.  The first thought that I had this morning when I awakened was that when your mother dies, a big piece of you goes with her. Ironically, she also become a bigger part of you at the exact same time. There is that big hole in your heart, a quiet, sacred place where she will always remain. I often think of the ways that she led and gently guided and was always beside me.  

My mother has left me so many treasured memories and gifts. I tried to think of the most important thing she taught me growing up.  It was tough to choose.  But I would have to say that it was how to love my own children, to nurture them and care for them.  She taught me, by her example, how to create a good place for children to thrive.  That is because of what she continuously did for us.  And she did it so amazingly well without a mother of her own. Giving the gift of being your child's biggest support and cheerleader meant so much to me.  Any confidence I had came from her and her love.

I was struck with the feeling that there really cannot be a closer bond than that of mother and child, it is such a special and unique love. (I mourn for my mother that she did not have this in her life with her own beautiful mother. Her only remembrance of her mother was watching her casket being lowered into the ground.)  

I am not saying a mother's love is more important than your love for your spouse, I am just saying the unconditional love for our spouse is something you strive for all of your lives and a lot of conditions are placed on that love. There must be trust, fidelity, etc., etc. I like to think that in most cases with motherhood; selflessness is just a part of it from the beginning. For a good healthy mother...the baby's wants and needs and comfort always just naturally come first and before her own.

I think the mother/child relationship is the first place in our lives where we can feel and grasp an understanding of what unconditional love really is. It is the first place we get an inkling of how we are loved by God. 

I know not everyone has this kind of mother or is this kind of mother, but the potential is really there in the mother/child relationship like no other.  It can come from others for those whose mother can not be there for them in that way.

I am blessed to have a mother that instinctively knew and understood this. She was my biggest fan and teacher, my confidante, my very special friend and always there for me. In so many ways she truly gave her life for me and I miss her. Often times when I am just feeling melancholy...if I search my soul I find I am either thinking of her or one of our own children and missing them.

One Sunday years ago, we were reading and having a discussion on the last verse in the Old Testament in Sunday School. It left a lasting impression upon me. Here is one of the places where family relationships are put into to their proper perspective. 

If the hearts of the fathers and the hearts of the children are not turned to each other the earth will be smitten with a curse. I know this verse has various layers of meaning but we are definitely seeing some of this 'smiting' in our world right now. 

Part of that is that so many mothers are trying to have it all and do it all. There are so many dysfunctional and broken families as well. I am so thankful I didn't have a mom that divided herself in so many ways as to dilute her efforts as a mother, her heart was always turned to her family. I realized that I wanted to be remembered that way too.

Of course fathers are very important also. The relationship is just as vital, but different. There is just something so cellular about carrying and delivering a baby that makes motherhood so sacred and unique. But even more important than that is the service mothers render to children no matter how they receive them...biologically or as adoptees.Through that service, that natural love that germinates within us even before a birth, grows by leaps and knows no bounds.

I have long recognized that when my mother was old and disabled and I cared for her, that my love for her grew in the same unstoppable way. Without that service for the 12 years she lived after her brain surgery, I would have never loved her in the ways I do now. I am grateful to our Father in heaven for his plan, for eternal families and for the potential for joy that can be found in each one.

Happy Birthday Mom!  What a great day for us as your children and grandchildren.  Next year we'll  have a centennial celebration in your honor.  All our love, Bon-St-Gar

Bon-St-Gar is what our mother would call me and/or my brothers, Steve and Gary, when she could not sort out which one of us she was calling in the moment. She was a stellar mom in all the important ways.  

Passed from this life to a better one
on November 15, 2003