Mom

One of the warnings my Mom gave us that I never quite believed when I was a child was, "I won't always be around."  She was warning us that one day we would have to make it through life without her close at hand to protect us, feed us, mend us and all the things that mothers do, which we take for granted.  I understood about death, having spent much of my youth in the country and having slept next to my uncle Bob's coffin that was in our living room during his wake, which was what I was all night long - lying awake on the couch.

However, even as I understood the truth that my son who was six at the time shared over the shoebox coffin of his hamster, "It is the way of things.  Everyone must die sometime," I did not internalize the fact that my mother wold actually, factually, in finality - die.  But a quarter of a century ago she did precisely that, my Mom breathed her last.

Despite the level of sainthood we tend to give our mothers when they pass, I know my Mom was not perfect.  I think safeguarding and feeding six kids with my Dad so often sent to remote assignments in the Army, she did the best she could.  As the fifth child down, followed by a baby girl in the princess slot, I often felt unnoticed and even unloved.  I was left at a gas station when I was four, while the rest of the family, including the dog, kept going down the road.  On my fifth birthday, I mentioned it to her and she replied, "Well, I'll be.  It is your birthday."  Then she handed me breakfast and said, "Happy scrambled eggs."  I don't think she meant to overlook me, I think she was just overloaded and running short on emotional energy.

Even though I didn't always feel close, didn't live close (over 2,000 miles away) and didn't keep close tabs (went home every year or two) - she was still my Mom and she was there, just a phone away.  When I received the call that Sunday morning in 1990, I felt a profound loss. She wouldn't be on the other end of the phone or greet me when I walked through the door when visiting home - whatever was or might be, was not and would not be in this life going forward.

I felt a loss that is hard to express and probably not possible to be fully understood by someone who has not yet come to that part of their journey.  I felt the loss of myself as seen in her eyes.  I remember having a "waking dream" of a little blonde-hair, blue-eyed boy sitting alone, crying.  I felt I would never be someone's little boy again.  My time to become fully adult had come.

I know that she is not really gone, that her presence is still real, that she still lives. Her words still echo in my memory: "Count your blessings."  "If you have your health, you have everything."  "Don't bend over like that, bend at the knees."  "A family that prays together, stays together>'

My mother gave me life twice.  She brought me into the world and she introduced me to the Lord Jesus Christ, as her mother did for her.  I would have to say that I can relate to Timothy whose "sincere faith first lived in his grandmother Lois and then in his mother Eunice" (2 Tim 1:5).

Although my Mom was not perfect and sometimes overlooked me or seemed less than enamored with  me, she gave me the one perfect gift without which nothing else would ultimately matter: a foundation for faith in Jesus.  And, I must admit that while I never said it enough, "Thanks Mom, I love you."  Your number five child.