Mother's Day Without Mom

My Mom's 1st Mother's Day
(May 1955)

I knew this day would come.
My Mother passed away in January of this year.
This will be our first Mother’s Day without her.

What do I miss most about my Mom?
The emotions are almost too complex to put into words.
I imagine the list will expand as the passing months and years go by.

My brother and sister have been sifting through some of Mom’s things—a normal process following the death of a loved-one. Mom marked some items that she thought we’d like to have with a note inside, or a simple hand-printed name on the back.

A Tiffany pen I gave her as a Mother’s Day gift one year turned up with a note on the inside of the box, “Brent gave me this pen from Tiffany's. He should have it when I 'croak.'"
Yes, my prim and proper school-marm Mom often so referred to her demise…and now we have it in writing.

In her later years, Mom was an avid crossword puzzle worker. She would dutifully work the daily puzzle in the Temple Telegram newspaper, but skipped the Sunday edition because, “it was too hard,” as she would say. Her spot at the kitchen table was frequently cluttered with the past week’s puzzles, clipped from the paper by my Dad, and worked in pen by my Mom. She was confident! 

A metal cart still stands sentinel next to her place at the table, laden with a giant crossword puzzle dictionary, extra pens, note pads, and crossword puzzle books.  There is also an assortment of greeting cards and her hand-written address book in that cart.

Mom was an avid card-sender.
In her desk I discovered many blank card envelopes with postage stamps already affixed. They’re the “forever” stamps issued by the post office, and knowing Mom, she probably bought them back in 2007 when the stamps were first introduced at 41-cents. She knew they’d be more expensive later.

Everyone says, “be sure to hug your loved-ones because you never know when it will be the last time you see them.” On this first Mother’s Day without my Mom, I take solace in the fact that we always did, and we always told her we loved her, too. She knew that she was loved.
And now, she is missed.

Coming Home for Easter

 

The tree-shaded cul-de-sac looked familiar with neatly manicured lawns boasting the first blooms of Spring. I pulled into the driveway and turned to park under the porte-cochere. They didn’t notice my arrival, and so I parked and walked around the corner of the house. My parents stood at the doorway of their beloved greenhouse, hand in hand, observing the promises of a new growing season.

Mom’s walker was standing sentinel on the footbridge that provided access to the greenhouse—a kit structure Dad had purchased a few years earlier. It held all manner of exotic and not-so-exotic plants, the names of which I couldn’t begin to recount. But my parents knew them all by name, and my mother was gifted with the ability to coax to life anything with chlorophyll. My father complemented her skills with his undying discipline and precision in caring for the assortment. The result was a 10 x 15 oasis that harbored all manner of organisms of flora and fauna, the proof of which was an explosion of colors and new growth this early in the season.

And so they stood holding hands, my father leaning into the doorway, my mother pointing at something just beyond—a snapshot of how their time together has been for the past 69-years of their 93-year existence.

I had driven up to retrieve them for the long Easter weekend. Mom no longer drove, and Dad had finally accepted, begrudgingly, that the three-hour drive over the rivers and through the woods back to our house was a bit too much for the comfort level of his children. Never mind the fact he was nearly deaf in one ear. He was still confident in his abilities to drive, especially with a newer car “that practically drives itself,” he proudly proclaimed at his last checkup. Yet, he still insisted on driving a nearly ancient pickup truck that definitely did not drive itself.

The Easter weekend here provided my parents with a chance to see more of the family, including a recently engaged granddaughter and her fiancé, and a still somewhat shy great-grandson. Their visit, however, was too short, and the return trip home seemed to fly by. Dad commented that he noticed a lot of changes in the scenery along the way—probably a side benefit of not having to drive!

On my next visit, we’ll pull all of the plants out of the greenhouse and arrange them around the backyard, under a gazebo, and along a flagstone patio Dad laid by hand years ago. And they will sit under that gazebo and admire their handiwork and each other.