Mother's Day

It's been a little more than four years since my mom died.  I think about her almost every day, even now.  Mother's Day is bittersweet and I guess that will never change.  While I very much appreciate my wife, Jude, and all that she does for our boys, it's hard for me to shake the melancholy I feel on Mother's Day.

It's strange but I'm afraid if I think too deeply about my mother and all that I miss about my relationship with her, I'll find myself enveloped in sadness and unable to function properly.  Pondering all that was lost the last few years of her life and when she died is an exercise in emotional futility.  I don't think there is anything to be gained by it other than feeling sorry for myself.  

Still, it's hard not to think about how much my mom would have loved seeing my boys grow up.  JP and Joe would have had so much fun talking sports with her.  Her love of sports - reading the sports page, watching and going to games, listening to sports talk radio - would have been the coin of the realm in her relationship with them, much as it was in her relationship with me.  Ours was such a unique relationship - deeper in many ways that mother and son - a friendship or a kinship of sorts.  I know she would have had a similar relationship with my boys.

Beyond that, my mother dedicated her life to her children and to her family.  After the death of my father my 31 year old mother could have done anything with her life.  She was young, intelligent, attractive and living in California, just outside Los Angeles.  She was financially secure, whatever that meant in the early 1970's due in part to life insurance and a prudent investment she and my dad made in stock in a hospital.  She could have dated, remarried, and maybe had another child or two.

She did none of those things, however.  She moved her young family from California to middle Tennessee to be closer to her family, I suppose, with a sister in Green Hills and another one in Gallatin.  She dated - briefly - on only one occasion that I can recall.  Instead, she took care of Tracy and me, adding Alice to our family when her sister died in the late 1970's.   

That's not all she did, of course.  Shortly after we moved back to Tennessee, she earned a master's degree in education from Vanderbilt's Peabody College of Education and taught at an inner city school for a couple of years.  She returned to nursing, later, and worked nights for 17 years at Baptist Hospital, where she positively impacted many, many lives and families.  

What she did mostly, though, is talk care of her family.  My Aunt Margaret then, in later years, her mother (my grandmother).  And Tracy, Alice, and me and, of course, Kaitlyn, Matthew (Tracy's children) and mine, too.  She so loved her grandchildren.

What might have been is hard place to go, for me, anyway.  I wish my mom could have seen JP and Joe compete.  Although she would have been a nervous wreck, she would have loved watching JP pitch a seven inning complete game in a 1-0 loss to David Lipscomb in the final game of his middle school baseball season.  She also would have loved to watch Joe play left field, shortstop, and pitcher, and lead his team from all three positions.  

Similarly, my mom would have loved watching JP be confirmed in the Catholic Church after almost two years of classes.  She would have loved watching Joe take his first communion, too.  

Maybe, though, she is watching JP and Joe, or watching over JP and Joe.  That's what I need to believe and it's what I do believe.  

Happy Mothers' Day, Mom.  I miss you.