Happy Mother’s Day

I took my mother for granted. I thought she would always be here. Her mother lived to be 97, so why wouldn’t her mother’s daughter? My mother lived 25 years less than my grandmother and her death hit me hard. It hit us all hard. Fifteen years ago tomorrow, Mother’s Day.

I lived in a grievous fog and thought depression and sadness were my new normal. Until they weren’t. Two years later I realized the veil had slowly lifted, although I didn’t recognize when. It finally felt good to remember happy times and her ridiculous “Rubyisms” without that gut-wrenching longing for her.

This Mother’s Day, I am grateful for a conversation we had a few years before she passed.

“Mother, I’m really sorry I was such a difficult teenager, always causing you some kind of grief.”

“That’s not the way I remember it.”

I was in disbelief. How could she not see it that way? I was an angry, disrespectful, smart-ass. This was as good a time as any to say what else was on my mind.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to have the happy, easy life you deserved; do and see things you never got to experience.”

“What makes you think I didn’t? I wouldn’t change anything. I had you girls and I love you two and those grandsons more than anything on this Earth. I wouldn’t ask for anything more.”

Again, I was surprised. I expected her to tell me all her regrets. Instead, she gracefully and beautifully put me in my place.

I wish Mother could have seen the birth of her first great-grandson and wait in anticipation with us for her great-granddaughter next month and next great-grandson to be born in September. But I won’t be surprised when we see her again and she tells us she held each of them before they were placed in their mothers’ wombs.

Happy Mothers Day, Mother. You are loved.