"Mothers Day"

I hate Mothers Day! There I've said it. I really, truly do. I have hated it ever since my own mother died when I was fourteen. It is the one time of the year I really get depressed even though it has been many, many years since her death. Still I hate being reminded my mother is dead. I get so down in the dumps that I just pretend it isn't happening. A few days afterwards I can think about it but not on that day.

Right after my mother died and for a few years thereafter I refused to go to church on Mothers Day. There was a tradition (which I now think has been stopped) that people whose mothers were alive got to wear a red rose on their lapel, etc; and for those whose mother was dead there was a white flower. I refused to wear a flower, which seemed to upset everyone in my family and at my church so I just stopped going on that day. No thank you, thank you very much.

One of the things I miss most about my mother was her total acceptance of who I was. She was the first person who ever really knew me. She knew what I liked and what I disliked. She knew who I liked and who I disliked. She was never judgmental and she could keep a secret. I told her all my dreams and ambitions, all my plans and my goals. She never belittled them. She thought they were magnificent.

She also was a great talker. She spoke to me like an adult from the earliest age. Maybe she knew she would never know me as a true adult so she got started early. I never felt she talked down to me, and when you are a child that is a big thing.

After she got sick she told me she would be happy if she could live to see her grandchildren. She then revised that to be alive when I graduated from college. She then revised that to be alive when I graduated from high school. She died the summer before I started the tenth grade. I thought of her when I graduated from high school. I thought of her when I graduated from college. I thought of her when my children were born. I think of her all the time.

Most of the memories of my mother are happy ones, except when I think of her illness. I remember her singing voice, the way she would roll her eyes, the thinness of her hands, and a million other things. I remember all of these and it makes me happy that I can remember. But I still hate Mothers Day. It says to me she is gone, and that doesn't make me happy.

There is a special bond between mothers and sons. My wife has it with our boys. It is indefinable. It is invisible. It is important. I had it once, and now I miss it.

 

 

 

 

 

©2005 Jackie K. Cooper

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