Mothers Day

I haven't cried about my mother for a long, long time. Until tonight. It snuck up on me as I was lying in bed, waiting to go to sleep. As my thoughts were winding down from a stressfull and anxiety-filled day, I started thinking about her, and all of the sudden I wished she was sitting on the edge of my bed, rubbing the hair off my face, and telling me it was going to be okay. That familiar feeling of grief started in my gut and made its way up through my throat and finally to my eyes and I started sobbing. I couldn't stop.

Maybe it's because Mother's day is a week away. Or because my friend's dad died just a few months ago and her grief is bringing back all of those feelings I felt the days after my mom died. The finality of it all. The realization I wouldn't hear her voice, feel her hand on my face, or even have her around to pick a fight with. It was all gone. Done. Forever.

I feel vulnerable and afraid right now. Battered by life. I want the safety of my mom's arms. You know that scene in "Saving Private Ryan" where they're sneaking up on some Germans in a snipers nest and gun fire breaks out and after all is said and done one of the soldiers is down and bleeding profusely? The others surround him and are trying to staunch the blood coming out of him but it's obvious the blood is coming too fast and it's useless. The soldier cries out for his mother. That's how I feel.

My mom and I never talked that much. I didn't share too much of my life with her. And she didn't know how to share her life with me, although at times I sensed she wanted to. So we fought. For me that was a way of engaging her, to have a relationship that went beyond the surface. I regret things I said, ways I treated her. But in the past few years of her life we had finally become friends. I thought I'd have another 20 years to be her friend. But then she died at 63.

She made me mad at times. Frustrated the heck out of me. I felt like I could never live up to her expectations. But through it all I knew she loved me and she showed me in those tiny, incremental ways mothers do. Like when I was in high school and ran cross country, I'd get cramps in my legs in the middle of the night. She'd come into my room and rub Ben Gay into my sore, cramping muscles until I went back to sleep.

Or the time in Junior High School when I discovered straight legged corderoy LEVI's were in and bell-bottoms were out. I couldn't walk into the Junior High School with bell bottoms, I'd be the laughing stock! Money was tight at the time, so my mom stayed up all night sewing my bell-bottom corderoys into straight legged corderoys. The next morning they were laid across my bed.

All of those little sacrifices she made throughout my life far outweigh the ways she made me feel guilty, or inadequate, or not good enough. I know now that those were the things she felt about herself, so she couldn't help but pass them on to me. I forgive her.

And I hope she forgave me. Part of my grief has been that I wished I had loved her better. Things become so clear from a distance. I took her for granted. She wasn't a perfect mother. And I wasn't a perfect daughter. But still, I miss her like crazy. And I long for her to rub my aching legs that are sore from running this exhausting marathon called life.