Mother's Day

Mother's Day. For as long as I can remember, this day has been a source of anxiety for me.  I struggled, for years, with the idea of coming up with some way to honor my mother on this day without betraying how I really felt.  I did love her, but I suppose I never really felt that sense of closeness, the bond that most people seem to have with their mothers.  My childhood memories of her are fraught with times of conflict, her harsh words, the dissatisfaction she showed with every gift that was ever given to her for Christmas or Mother's day or her birthday.

A few years ago I decided to go the non-traditional route and stop giving her trinkets and gifts and instead tried to go with things I made her, or little sentimental tokens that actually conjured good memories for me.  One year I found a card with a cardinal on the front and wrote inside about my fond memories of having her hold me up at the kitchen window to watch the redbirds in the back yard.  She didn't get it.  There was no doo-dad or trinket attached, no gift card or twenty-dollar bill inside. In her mind it wasn't a gift at all.   I'm sure it ended up in the trash because I never saw it again after that day.  I'm really not sure she even read it.  Another year I brought my guitar over and played it for her, sang her a song even. That's something I hadn't done in years before that day, and I haven't done it again since.  For anyone.  Again, she didn't understand that it was for her, from my heart, and I heard from other family members that she was upset that I didn't bring her anything for Mother's Day.

So I finally gave up on trying to make that connection with her through my positive memories, and instead went back to giving her a basket of flowers or some little figurine to add to her collection.  She understood the language of giving things, genuine fondness and affection were so foreign to her that she couldn't appreciate them.  Maybe it was because she grew up with so little and that the gift of some little thing was a big deal because most people couldn't afford to give in that way.  Maybe, in her mind, a gift that cost money required more sacrifice and selflessness than giving something from the heart.

There are so many things about my mother I will never understand.  With her recent passing, I have come to accept that the only way I can make peace with her is to learn to accept her as she was.  She was troubled, often angry.  She was fearful, depressed, thought so little of herself and of others that she lost her zeal for life long before she died.  I know that my mother embraced her death, that in reality, she had probably been longing for it for far longer than any of us knew.

From this Mother's Day forward, I can begin to think of her and honor her in my own way, without worrying about whether she gets it, or appreciates the way I choose to remember her.  I have to admit that it comes as a relief today, that I don't have to go pick out some insincere-feeling gift to give her.  I can keep the fond memories of her close to my heart and let all the rest of it go.  The anxiety of obligation is a thing of the past now. I find myself at ease with the thought of my missing mother.  At ease because I know she is finally at rest, and because I am finally free of the need to find a way to speak to her in a language she could understand.  In a way, we were always from different worlds, but I find comfort in knowing that now she's at peace in hers, and that now I can express my love for her in a way that makes sense to me.