At times we may have a person in our life that we love and appreciate, yet a clear perspective on the full impact they make on our life, may elude us. Sometimes this person is our own mom. Without our even asking, moms are there from our first earthly breath. They are with us throughout our life and are so much a part of us that it may be hard to distinguish where they end, and we begin.
My mom lived a long life, a life that reflected family as her priority. We lost dad too young – at the age of 64 – but mom came from a family where longevity was the norm. She passed away on a still, summer night, a few weeks short of her 96th birthday. A debilitating illness had beset her the last three years of her life, making her days increasingly difficult to endure. Eventually she began to say that, in spite of how much she loved us and wanted to stay with us, she needed to go.
I knew mom all the years of my life, yet there were things about her I didn’t know or understand. Or did I just not see them? Two years after her passing, I was starting to get some perspective on the important role she had played in my life. It was around this time that I set about the task of going through a box which contained many things that she had saved. There were hundreds of cards and notes received from family and close friends the last couple of decades of her life, but there were other items too, like drawings from the grandkids, recipes and other things she deemed as special.
One afternoon I sat down on my living room floor with the box. Looking through it, I felt as though I were walking through the latter part of mom’s life, visiting with cherished old friends and family members along my way. More than just a friendly journey, it soon became my own personal journey, where many understandings were unfolded.
My first realization, given every little thing she made a point to save, was just how sentimental mom had been. Being myself a fierce saver of sentimental items, it dawned on me that day that perhaps I had gotten that from my mom. This had never before occurred to me.
Continuing through my journey, I came across the sales receipt from a set of living room furniture that mom had purchased. Upon closer examination of the date, the memory slowly came back to me of why she had bought that furniture. Later in my mom’s life and many years after she’d become a widow, she lived for a time with two of my daughters and I. Ours was a harmonious, all-female, three-generation household, which lasted until I somehow determined it was time to strike out in a different direction. Our arrangement having ended, mom moved to an apartment back in her home county and the living room set was purchased to furnish it. Reliving it all now in retrospect, seventeen years older and wiser, I suddenly found myself cast into the role of “adult child.” I closed my eyes and cringed, realizing that at the time, I had never even thought about how my decision had affected mom.
Memories of other things that had occurred through the years began popping into my mind:
A Christmas morning spent with her, my dad, my husband and our young toddler. Mom had envisioned how the morning would go. We would wake up and it would all be magical, but for some reason the reality had fallen short. When she tried to tell me why it felt disappointing, I had no understanding of what she was talking about.
A time, well into my adulthood, when my sister and I were supposed to meet two of her old girl friends from way back in her high school days. Sis and I got our wires crossed, arrived late and missed meeting the friends. Mom was incredibly disappointed, but I just didn’t realize at the time how much it meant to her.
When mom was older and us kids had grown, married and were living our own lives, mom would still worry about us. I would say in my confident, thirty-something tone, “Mom, don’t worry about us! Weren’t you young once and didn’t you figure out your life and your problems? Well, we will too. So just don’t think about it!” I thought there was a switch that mom could just turn off.
Several realizations were born that day on my living room floor, one of them being how very much like my mom, I was.
I felt a new compassion for her as an individual. And the coolest realization of all was that two years after her death, I was being taught by something she had left behind. It helped me learn about her, about myself, and about life in general.
Next time I ask myself if, or why, I should hang onto things I think are special, or if it’s hard to decide what to keep and what to toss – remembering the day I spent with mom’s box of memories will help me consider my answer.
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