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.

The Mother of All Momma’s

Mildred Florine Clanton
(1929 - 2023)

It is a season of sadness.
As my generation slides indelicately into what demographers call “old age,” so our parents’ generation leads the way to their own lives’ termination.

In 2021 we lost a brother-in-law and sister-in-law; on Thanksgiving Day 2022, one of my mother’s remaining sisters passed at the age of 95. On New Years Day 2023, one of my father’s sisters left us at age 89. And the month was not half-spent before my own mother took her last breath at the age of 93.
We buried her yesterday.

My previous post reveals my own sentiments about how to properly view death. Still, the sting of death is felt when the woman who gave you life surrenders her own. It has been said the intensity of pain upon losing a loved one is directly proportionate to the depth of love for that person.
What can be deeper than the love between mother and child?

23-years ago, on my Mom’s 70th birthday, I composed a few verses in a feeble attempt to capture my thoughts then. I ran across the poem this week in her home; it had been framed and hung in one of the bedrooms.
I think it’s worth sharing now:

The Mother of All Momma’s

Mommy taught us nursery rhymes,
And songs and fables, too…
And stories of a teen-aged girl in 1942.
Mommy taught us things about a time we never knew;
And we always knew if “Mommy Said…”
It was positively true.

Momma drove the taxi
To school and orthodontist;
Piano lessons once a week,
Banking, groceries, and ophthalmologist.
Three Chevy’s and a Buick
were our transports while in school.
Momma took us everywhere; she was pretty cool.

Mom was whom we talked to when we needed dough;
She wrote the checks and paid the bills
and made our household glow.
Mom took care that we were fed,
Clothes were clean and pressed;
You could tell we had a Mom that cared how we were dressed.
And Mom was whom we joked with, even when we knew
She didn’t get the punchline, even after three times through.

Mothers are still mommies long after kids have grown;
They bake and cook and fret and fuss
--as if we’ve never gone.
Mother is our pattern for caring for our kids;
Mother is our reason for doing as we did.
Mother loves our father, and has kept our family strong.

Our Mommy’s a septuagenarian now, but we still call her, ‘Mom.’
She’s the Mother of all Momma’s, when all is said and done.

Written with love on my mother’s 70th birthday, September 4, 1999