Lessons in Gratitude Day 333

Today I have been reminiscing and thinking again about my mother–today would have been her 86th birthday. May and June are times of remembering Mom whether I want to or not. Beginning with Mother’s day in the second weekend in May, continuing with the anniversary of her death on Memorial Day (May 29) 1995 and the date of her funeral June 3, her and my father’s wedding anniversary on June 5, and her birthday on June 11, if you knew and loved my mother it’s impossible to get through these two months emotionally impassive. It still surprises me, catches me off guard when I find myself particularly melancholy during this period. I’ve come to accept it like an old, unexpected but not unwelcome visitor.

I am grateful this evening for the means we have available to us to capture and share memories. Today I posted on Facebook a few old photographs of my mother that I had found a few years ago in a stack of pictures at my Dad’s house. I scanned them onto my computer and was able to share a few of them with “the world” today. These pictures were taken before I was born of a pretty, smiling young woman full of life and possibilities. I was moved by pictures I found of her with each of her parents–first with her mother, who shared her June 11th birthday, and then with her father about whom I still know so little. Each person had such wonderfully loving expressions on their faces that looking at them now some 55 or so years later nearly brought tears to my eyes. I guess I won’t ever really stop missing my mother, though after 17 years I no longer feel the acute pain of her loss. It has diminished to a mostly gentle wistfulness, except for those times such as I’ve experienced recently when I feel like a lost little child who wants nothing more than to lay her face against her mother’s breast and be comforted. Then the pain is a bit sharper until it once again subsides to near stillness.

I do not take for granted the solid, strong and loving relationship I had with my mother. I know that for too many people their connections to their mothers were strictly biological and no warmth or affection existed between them. Far too many children are neglected or abused by their mothers and cannot fathom what it is like to feel anything but relief at their passing. No, I realize how fortunate I am to have liked my mother as well as loved her, to be pleased to see her face when I look at my reflection in the mirror, to know that I share some of the same interests and creative outlets that she did. I am grateful to have had her in my life for as long as I did, though to my thinking it was still way too short.

Now don’t get me wrong: my mother was by no means perfect and I didn’t always agree with her and think she was completely wonderful. We had our share of differences of opinion and personality, and in some cases major philosophical departures. I can look back on various decisions I made based of my mother’s advice and out of a desire to please her and realize the “negative” impacts those decisions had on my life. I’m still working my way through some of them. No, she was not perfect, but even in that she was teaching me that being a parent doesn’t mean being perfect; but in large part it involves loving each of your children for who they are and doing the very best you can to “bring them up right.” That formula has mostly worked alright for me (though my children might differ with that sentiment.)

I will probably spend a little more time looking at pictures of my mother. I realize with a pang of sadness that I don’t have close at hand any photographs of me with my mother. I’ll have to look among the few remaining photos from Dad’s bunch as well as among my own taken over the years. Nevertheless, I have enough to look at tonight and remind me how grateful I am for who she was and is in my life. I’ll return once more to the poem she wrote for her mother that I turned into a song and offer these words for her on her birthday:

© M. T. Chamblee, 2012