Todays Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul

[Guest guest]

Missing My Mother

By Vicki Huffman

It happened today as I passed a full-length mirror while shopping in

the

mall. Rather than my usual brief glance to check my hair and makeup, I was

brought up short. It suddenly seemed as if I was looking at my mother - her

face, her hair color, her body shape and her kind of shoulder bag. For one

brief moment, I thought about calling to tell her about it. Then my mind

cleared and I remembered that heaven is farther away than the best fiber

optics

can reach.

Getting used to being motherless is taking longer than I thought

possible.

Even though it's been six years since my mother died, many things still

trigger

thoughts of her: seeing her birthday or anniversary date on the calendar,

wearing her wedding ring, dusting the brass candlesticks she bought

overseas,

sniffing the aroma of meat loaf in a cafeteria (it's not as good as hers),

or

glimpsing an intensely pink sky at sundown, a near duplicate of the one that

appeared the day she was buried.

Common sense tells me these reminders will lessen in frequency and

intensity as the years pass. Or will they? My friend Frances recently told

me,

" My mother died over thirty years ago, and I still miss her so much. "

Why does the loss of a mother seem different than other losses? Maybe

it's

the unique mother-daughter relationship that causes motherless daughters

like me

to feel our grief for years while concealing it like a box of old love

letters

high on a shelf. The immense expectations connected with a mother's role

leaves

us struggling with the void she's left behind. The one we thought would

always

be there for us - nurturing, loving, caring - now no longer is. Suddenly we

find ourselves measuring the future in terms of mother-absence. Mother

won't

see her grandchildren born. Mother won't attend her oldest grandson's

graduation. Mother won't be escorted down the aisle first in her

granddaughter's wedding. But even those painful thoughts are clung to

because

they represent a connection, a remembrance.

Jeanette, a friend who lost her mother three years ago, calls her

difficult

moments " grief points " - times when she suddenly feels the loss of what was

or

what could have been. With the realization that her mother, an excellent

seamstress, would no longer be there to make a wedding dress for her

someday,

Jeanette was left with a poignant sense of future loss.

My grief points usually involve past losses, regrets over the times my

mother and I failed to communicate. If I could pick up the phone today and

reach her, would we get beyond small talk to deeper issues? Because she

lived

seven hundred miles away (and often seemed intimidated by the phone), we

postponed those conversations for our semi-annual visits. Then there never

seemed to be enough time or privacy - until she was dying.

During that seven-week period, our conversations went well beyond the

books

we were reading or current events. We talked about life and death, past and

present hurts. The mother-daughter bond grew stronger (better late than not

at

all). I thank God for those times, at the same time wondering what might

have

happened if He'd chosen to grant miraculous healing.

Why didn't we communicate better earlier? I was simply " too busy. "

While

I was caring for a growing family, the years rushed by in a flurry of

activity.

My mother said she understood because she'd been there. She even boasted to

her

friends about how complicated my life was. But after finding a packet of my

old

letters in her bureau drawer while emptying her house, I regret not writing

her

more. I, too, often played that foolish game of " I'll write her when she

writes

me. " A game where nobody won. My mother frequently described herself

(pretty

accurately) as " the world's worst letter writer. " This was evidenced by a

note

she wrote me in college that included a sentence about having the cast taken

off

her leg. I called home immediately and found out she'd broken her ankle two

months earlier but neglected to mention it!

Although physical distance kept us apart most of our adult lives, I

wish

I'd been better at bridging the emotional distance that sometimes separated

us.

Now I realize I shouldn't have expected it to be a fifty-fifty proposition;

one

person usually needs to give more in order to keep communication open.

Ironically, I've come to understand my mother better now that she's

gone.

It recently occurred to me that I never saw her cry. She undoubtedly had

many

reasons to cry: a traumatic childhood with an abusive father, the loss of

her

first husband in World War II, a turbulent marriage to my father (an

alcoholic),

and multiple health problems and surgeries.

After she died, I found a poem in her Bible that spoke of accepting

what

comes into our lives without complaint ( " whatever is, is best " ) because it

comes

through the hands of a loving God. Apparently, she believed that. Even

though

she didn't come to a personal relationship with Christ until several years

before she died, she never harbored anger against God for the way her life

turned out. Thinking of her perseverance and strength gives me a fresh

appreciation for her attributes.

On this continuing grief journey, I'm learning not to look at the past

through rose-colored glasses, to succumb to the temptation to make a martyr

of

my mother (she would have hated that!), or to idealize her with a perfection

no

human being merits. Neither do I blame her for any childhood deficiencies,

not

even the ones for which she apologized. She gave me what she was capable of

giving at the time. And I've forgiven her for the times when that wasn't

enough, as I hope my children will forgive me.

When I was about five years old, I used to climb onto my mother's lap

and

say, " I love you. I have the best mommy in the whole wide world. " It

seemed to

embarrass her because she never knew exactly how to respond. The reason

became

clear when she explained to me on her deathbed that, for some unknown

reason,

the words " I love you " had always been hard for her to say.

Sometimes when I think of her now, I don't see her as I last did - in

her

sixties, frail and bedridden as she lost her second battle with cancer.

Instead, when life knocks me around and I find myself suddenly inexplicably

wanting my mother, I picture her as the beautiful twenty-eight-year-old

woman

she once was and myself as a child again. I climb onto her lap and say, " I

love

you. I have the best mommy in the whole wide world. "

But this time my mother puts her arms around me and says, " I love you,

Honey. I have the best daughter in the whole wide world. " And it is

enough.

Maybe when I join her in heaven, we'll have a chance to try it again.