mother

January 14, 2018

The Last Escape

New mom

My eyes snapped open as I heard the soft creak of the stairs, the gentle whoosh of the front door, then a few minutes later, an engine turn over. As it idled for a minute, my husband rolled over next to me.

“Why does she do that?” he asked in a half-asleep voice.

I smiled as I heard my mother back carefully out of the driveway. “She hates good-byes.” I waited until I could hear the Toyota pushing off into the still dark night no more, then turned over and went back to sleep. That was around 2006.

On December 17th 2017, she skipped out on her last goodbye, with a swift downward spiral that hailed a trip to a local ER. When the phone rang just before midnight at my brother’s house, he assumed it was an update. But she was gone, like a night bird, swooping high into the midnight sky.; escaped from the ancient tent that kept her bound. And no goodbye.

My mother was never easy, but once you accepted who she was, it made your life, well not easy, but better. Quirky, defiant, stubborn and often withdrawn, but yet so fierce in her love for her children, she was a study in opposites. She was soft as a southern teacake – surrounded by barbed wire. We tried, all of us, over our adult years to bend and shape her into a more ordinary mom – enticing her into classes or retreats, even bus tours. And how about book clubs, or the senior center? But she ignored us, usually withdrawing further into her New York Times crossword puzzle or a solitary bench in a musty library, a pile of books beside her.

We were different. She was brilliant, wary of the world before her and unsettled until she could piece it all apart and diagnose it. She hated laziness and stupidity, especially together, and was blunt and condescending in her opinions. I was more like my dad – simple minded, naive enough to step boldly into quicksand, then fast enough to scuttle out. I was a peacemaker; she wielded a sword. I let go, she held fast to any grudges she could gather.

As she aged, her world grew smaller, but the possibilities for catastrophe loomed large. Anxiety grew as her mind slipped away, replaced by copious Post-It notes dotting her walls and cabinets. Then a major artery in the left frontal lobe went. The next year, one on the right blew, and we had a brand new mom before us. The intellect, and the fear attached to it, was completely erased. The New Mom laughed a lot, painted her nails with White Out, ate napkins and would tickle you if you stood close enough.

“How are you doing?” I asked my brother Bob last week.

“I’m not sure who I miss the most,” he said. “The Old Mom or the New Mom.”

The New Mom lasted a lot longer than we thought she would. We assumed one more stroke would take her quickly but instead she declined slowly in a sweet little nursing home overlooking the Hudson River. You would find her in a wheel chair, sometimes wiping the fingers of her baby doll and kissing them one by one. In 2011, as I came around the corner and met her eyes, I said goodbye to the last remnant of the mom who loved me. She no longer knew who I was.

At the funeral, I was transfixed by an old black and white photo of a young woman, her mahogany hair long and messy, clothes hanging loose on her thin frame with the knee highs pulled up on her skinny white legs. My grandfather put this frail young girl on a train back when deep South meant a whole different country and sent her towards her dreams; graduate school, Columbia University, New York City. I think he knew that the little redhead who survived encephalitis at age five was much tougher than she looked. Her smile is wide but slightly pensive. She is looking at her future husband holding the camera, with guarded hope. This is the mom I never knew. By the time we could talk face-to-face, that hope had morphed to a droll cynicism and her courage had hardened to defiance. Like me, she had buried a son, and reached out to grasp the hand of a God she took years to come to terms with, surrendering in fragments and pieces. Ironically, the child that gave her the most trouble, (that would be ME) showed her the way to grace, to a Jesus who was bigger than a book or a class in theology, a Jesus who would love her tenaciously yet tenderly in her loneliness and fear. After I lost Spencer in 2002, she became an outright evangelist. “Let me tell you about my grandson who loved Jesus,” she would begin.

Mama was an amazing cook, seamstress and a natural beauty too but she never taught me a dang thing except how to make the best southern biscuits in Dixie. You better handle that dough like it’s a newborn. Maybe if I’d stuck around past age 15 I would’ve picked up some things, but I doubt it. I did share her overall disinterest in all things material and domestic. I think we were both hippies before they were invented.

“Nothing in my house matches,” I told my granddaughter Brooklynn recently, as she nodded in agreement. “It’s wonderful! You don’t have to worry if something breaks!” We laughed together, and then I added almost secretively, “Some people have matching everything!”

She gave me a sweet smile and said, “Ama, I think MOST people have matching everything.” And we laughed at the craziness of that, and of her grandmother too.

They say daughters invariably become their mothers. That thought would’ve made me cringe 40 years ago, but now I like it, most the time. And when I don’t ( my siblings and I have coined a new adjective for it: being “martha-ish”) I just ask Jesus to pull away the barbed wire and give me His love instead.

After I got the call that my mother died, I lay down on the couch in the quiet house and cried. I will miss her; the old mom, the new mom and that gutsy redhead alone on a train. But as I stared out at the moonlit night, I suddenly saw her running, and laughing. It was a mom I never knew! She was free and she had some people to see. And I waited until I could hear her laughter no more, until the night turned silent again. No more goodbyes, sweet mommy. Then I climbed back into bed and fell asleep.

Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. Psalm 124:7

May 5, 2015

A Mother’s Day KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)

One of the best cards –

A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.

—Anna Jarvis

and inside…

Anna Jarvis. You probably don’t know the name, but during a memorial for her mother, Ann Jarvis, in 1905, she decided it was a great idea to honor your mother, so she campaigned and lobbied tirelessly to make it an official American holiday. Naively, she thought it would just be nice to write mom a letter of appreciation, or just say I love you. When Hallmark began selling Mothers Day cards in 1912, she got mad – so mad she tried to get Mother’s Day rescinded. She even got arrested at a carnation distributor’s plant in Philadelphia. America won out. There was, after all, a lot of profit to be made in this confusing holiday.

I remember my dad giving us five bucks to run to the corner store and buy a big box of chocolates for my mother. The funny thing is, she hated chocolate. The box lay open on the kitchen counter for days, and we nibbled on them like mice, leaving those gross jelly filled chocolates ripped open on display, like someone might come along and say, “Hey, that looks irresistible!” Maybe my dad…

The 21^st century Mother’s Day has morphed into a grotesque commercial blowout, like so many American holidays, plying shamelessly on the consumers guilt or gullibility. I read an article about a woman who went on a website for people who want to commit adultery – sort of like a Sleazeball.com – because her husband did not give her jewelry for Mother’s Day.

My husband feels bad for me on Mother’s Day because A) my own mom is alive but has no idea who I am or what Mother’s Day is and B) my sons are far away – two in North Carolina and one in heaven. He has offered to buy me things but I remind him that I am not his mother. This seems evident. And I am blessed 365 days a year by two wonderful sons and their wives.

My children have bought me little trinkets over the years, including a necklace I still own and wear each Mother’s Day, but they know that my most favorite gift is a card or letter, just sharing their hearts with me. I guess if you have daughters this is not so uncommon, but sons emerge emotionally on rare occasions, like the seventeen-year cicadas. I have saved some of the Best of the Best over the years, including a box of poster paint handprints and IOU’s for doing dishes, back rubs and five dollars. Who knows? I may need them someday.

When you lose a child, the holiday screams at you at first, then over the years it becomes another reminder that we are not complete. There is a quirkiness that comes with this type of loss. My own mother, who lost a child when she was 36, skipped Quirky and went right to Crazy for many years. It did level off into an odd type of neurosis; sort of a combo Anxiety mixed with Fatalism and Reclusiveness. She loved her kids reluctantly after that. Motherhood had become risky and unpredictable. When my older brother had to tell her that my son had died, she started beating him in the chest with her little bony fists, yelling No! No! No! I think she was saying No more for me than Spence.

My mother grew up in the upper echelon of Southern society, where table settings and debutante parties trumped family time. Her mother’s alcoholism was a secret she shoved into a full family closet, until she was old enough to run, and she did – all the way to New York City. My father offered every thing she did not have; security, sanity and a family that fit nicely into a big station wagon. When my brother Timmy died suddenly in 1964, her world imploded and she accepted a twisted lie as her truth – she was no better at mothering than her own mom. She retreated into a purgatory of fear and self-doubt.

I think that the thought of her own daughter carrying the same legacy caused her to spin out into a gale storm of anger and confusion after Spencer died. My brothers intercepted and kept her away for a time so she could heal and I could breathe. Then for just a few years before her first brain hemorrhage, we became friends, and I discovered a bond we shared. We had both buried a son. After decades of being at odds and circling each other with suspicion, we found a common ground; a place of such unimaginable pain and sorrow that to this day I can only share with other women who have also lost a child. Then the connection is immediate. Deep calls unto deep. And there I found my mother’s love.

Like mom, I am quirky too – but with one outstanding difference. The anchor for my soul that is in Jesus Christ holds me securely from busting loose into a dark abyss without gravity or bearing. Yet I know what that dark place is like and it causes me to stay close to Jesus and look upward, using heaven to navigate by. For that, for this “thorn in the side”, I am grateful. There is no better place to spend your life than in Christ. And in that place of pain, He has made a garden. All kinds of things grow there. It’s crazy – good crazy.

I think grief is the most pure form of love. My heart is heavy for those who are new to this journey, who are spending their first Mother’s Day without a child that should be there, but is gone …the footstep, the laughter, the goofy cards and the clumsy words from a heart that loves their mom. If you know one of these moms, the broken ones, give them the best gift of all; let them talk about their son or daughter, or tell them you miss them too. The fear that you might awaken sadness is ridiculous. It never sleeps, trust me.

Spring is here. For those of us that endured the Big Freeze of 2015, we are a little amazed that anything can grow but it’s no big deal for God. The fragile bud opens, the pale green leaf uncurls like a baby’s hand and stretches out into new life.

In the hospital where I work, they play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” overhead when a baby is born. When I tell patients and families what it means, it never fails to illicit an “Awwwww” and a smile, even among the sickest or grumpiest. Upstairs a young woman holds out her arms and a squirming, wet and bewildered infant is laid there. She is mom, whether she is Princess Kate or a heroin addict. God has just changed her forever. The cord is cut but the heart is sealed with the most powerful love on earth. For as the little life unfolds and blossoms and someday leaves her, she is Protector and Keeper of the nest. Her job is to hold, then let go.

Can I suggest that this Mother’s Day we return to the humble beginnings of this day? Men, use words. Ladies, just love your imperfect mom. She did the best she knew how to do. Life is ever changing and in an instant, she could be gone. In the spirit of the first mother’s day, just say I love you and lots of Thanks. It really beats a box of chocolates.

***Anna Jarvis died at 84 in a sanitarium in Pennsylvania, never taking a penny of profit for Mother’s Day. Although she was the 10^th of 13 children, 7 who died before she was born, she never married or became a mother. She insisted the day was Mother’s day, singular not plural, so that people would make an effort to honor their very own mom, in a personal way. Although she fought tirelessly to keep it simple and not commercial, she lost that battle. Like my own mom, she spent the last few years of her life with dementia and finally happy.

Being silly, just a few months before her second stroke. Love you mom!

May 5, 2013

Happy Mother At Last Day

My brother Bob and Mom

I heard the text ringing through as I was at work on Sunday. I could see it was from Bob, my brother and that there was a picture attached. I quickly opened it and smiled. There was my mom, obviously outside with Bob on a beautiful spring day, and clenched in her hand was a happy yellow daffodil. Then I noticed a dandelion, in the same hand, pinched between her thumb and forefinger. Her expression was mild amusement. Bob had to have given her both flowers. I could hear her soft chuckle as he put them in her hand, the big yellow flower and the little one, maybe like he would’ve done 50 years ago as a little boy. But now mom is the child.

My mother is 84 now. I’ve been thinking of her a lot lately because Mother’s Day is coming up. When your parent has severe dementia, to the point where they no longer recognize you, or at least can’t verbalize it, you are in this strange limbo. The mom I knew has been gone for some time now. I still have sudden impulses to call her, to share something with her and within the same second I remind myself, “She’s gone.” But she’s not.

It was this time of year six years ago when I felt God telling me to go visit my mom in New York. She had moved there while in her 60’s, reeling from a cruel relationship with a man who appeared to offer security and friendship. She had returned to New York, where my brothers and sister lived, to have treatment for breast cancer. She was worn out and depressed so my brothers extricated her from the mess she was in, and moved her to an apartment with a small view of the Hudson River. She loved it, and for maybe the first time in her life, she was content to just be a mom and a grandmother and work on crossword puzzles out on her little porch.

She would drive anywhere, including Cape Cod, to see her grandkids and me, her oldest daughter. On occasion things went well, but often there was the familiar strain between us. My mother always had favorites, and rearranged our pictures on her dresser accordingly. I rarely made front row. Why did I never feel that she was happy with who I was? Or that she even saw who I was? I remember once she looked at me with a puzzled smile, and said, “Whose child are you anyway?” in that lilting South Carolina drawl that never left even after living in the north for 65 years. We were at odds, I think, from my birth. Her own mother abandoned her for Jim Beam, leaving no blueprint or instructions for motherhood. A daughter must’ve really scared her.

So it was a bit out of form for me to call her up and say, “Hey! I want to drive all the way to New York just to be with you.” I could tell it made her nervous and skeptical. Just us? In her apartment? Yes, for Mother’s Day.

When I arrived, she was as excited as a teenager throwing a party. She had bought a refrigerator full of snacks, mostly junk food, and I think the plan was just to stay up and eat all night, a favorite pastime for everyone in my family. I don’t remember much about the night. She insisted I sleep in her bed that had “nice clean sheets!” and she curled up on her couch, content. In the morning, we drank coffee on her little porch and ate some more. She laughed easily and I was moved. She actually seemed to really like me. I mean I always knew she loved me, but the like part…

As I got ready to leave, she walked into the living room with an envelope and handed it to me, shy and awkward, explaining, “These are Kina’s letters. They’re yours now.” I sat on the couch while she quietly sat next to me and read two letters dated 1964, the year my brother Tim had died.

Kina had been her mother’s friend, and she had one child, a little girl named Betty. One Sunday afternoon, while her husband Odell, was trying to take a Sunday nap, Kina told six year old Betty to go out and play, suggesting maybe her friend across the street was home. Minutes later, their lives changed forever. Betty was struck by a car and killed right outside their home. In 1964, as my mother reeled under the same crushing grief after my brother died suddenly one beautiful July day, Kina’s words poured off the page and into her heart, bringing some measure of healing, then and throughout the years.

There, on the couch, we had finally found a common ground; two mothers, each had buried a son. Inside a pain and sorrow so deep and so complex in all of its implications, was a place of familiarity between us. And as Kina’s typewritten words that were born from the depth of her own anguish and despair came alive with hope before me, I felt as if my mother’s hands, which were always folded in her lap, were gently holding me, touching me how mothers do, and making things all right.

One week later, Bob called. Mom had had a stroke. A massive bleed in the frontal lobe of her brain left her looking totally normal, but mentally devastated.

My parents met in graduate school at Columbia University in New York City. She was not stupid. But her intellect was like a fortress that kept vigilant guard over her heart. You could never know how she felt, just what she thought. After this stroke, the walls came crashing down. And just when she was able to rebuild a little, a second stroke hit her like a tsunami and wiped it all away. She became Mom, the child.

We thought a third stroke would come around and strike her down for good. We had all said goodbye to our mother in steps. Honestly, we were glad to say goodbye to the Mom with the Intellect. Oddly, she became tender, and affectionate, laughing easily. If you were standing close to her she might reach up and tickle your belly-button. She might also eat paper napkins, or fake fruit or write on the mirror with lipstick. I found her at two in the morning feeding a large jar of strawberry jam to my pug when she stayed with me for six months. This was the new Mom.

She’s mostly quiet now. Every now and then she’ll start a sentence, then just drift off. There is no frustration, no pain, no more disappointment. I’m grateful for my brothers and sister who visit her every week. Sometimes they send me pictures, and she is always smiling. And they are always holding her hand. God has her here for His reasons alone, and they are mostly a mystery to us. But it’s nice to love this New Mom, to hug her and kiss her instead of straining under the weight of her mental jousting and elusive love. For all of the psychoanalysis and diagnosing, she never could make sense of her life. She was so smart, but a dunce at life and love. As her daughter, I am more like her than I like to admit. Yet, my Redeemer does live, and thankfully, has loads of patience.

The last time I saw my mother she said my name, but I think it was a fluke. Still, the common ground we have sown in tears will never change. I’m so very glad I listened to God and stayed that night with her, for Mother’s Day. I thought the gift was for her but it was mostly mine. As I look at the picture of her holding the two yellow flowers and the childlike expression on her soft face, I know she is nestled in my Father’s arms, and I know that one day He will gently carry her home.

My brother Graham bought mom a digital frame for her room in the nursing home a couple of years ago. We joked that we all had the same position on her dresser now. As Bob and I sat comfortably in mom’s room last month, watching the pictures of children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren softly fading in and out on the frame, he said,

“Hey Robin, I think there’s more pictures of you in there than anyone else” and we all laughed, even mom. Maybe I can finally be her favorite…

June 12, 2012

Musings from a Mother of the Groom

: Miles’ wedding 2008. Ready to go again…

I remember a comment made to me by an elderly woman who was a patient of mine. It was early morning and my shift was almost over. I moved quietly about her room, hoping to not disturb her, yet I could feel her watching me and finally I turned to discover I was right.

“You must be the mother of boys, “she said.

“I am.” She smiled, showing she was a little pleased with herself. “Three of them. How can you tell?”

She only shrugged and rolled over in bed. I’ve wondered more than a few times what she saw and I’ve even caught myself observing my friends who have only boys. I’ve noticed a few things:

We’re tired a lot. Boys, mine without exception, are high, high energy. We also adopt a military style of mothering. You shout a lot, you don’t hedge on your threats, and you become really creative with your discipline. I was a single mom for many of my parenting years, and I regret not cuddling and playing more, but I more often felt like I wished I carried a weapon. The Bible mentions a rod. I wanted a big rod, maybe with electrical current in it. Don’t get me wrong. I loved it all; building forts, camping, Little League, even the potty-talk. I grew up with three brothers so it was a very familiar world. But mothers of boys, I salute you. We are a tough lot.

I’ve been searching for a Mother of the Groom outfit this week. The internet directs me to “show up, shut up and wear beige.” I can manage that. My last boy is a man now and set to be married in just a few weeks. I am so blessed to be the mother of boys who picked incredible girls to marry. The old adage “A son leaves his mom to marry a wife, but a daughter’s a daughter for the rest of your life” may be true, but I already have one daughter-in-law, Erin, who has truly become a beautiful daughter to me and my almost-daughter-in-law, Kayla, is a friend and total blessing. So I win all around. My boys are happy, mama’s happy and I gain two awesome daughters, not to mention the best part: grandchildren.

Yet I have to be totally honest. Looking for something to wear always reveals my deeper emotional temperament. At the Power of Forgiveness event held last winter on the ten year anniversary of my son, Spencer’s death, I worked myself into such a fury trying to dress for the night that I finally threw myself on the bed and cried.

“I’m not going to this stupid thing,” I announced to my husband who has known me long enough to know where this kind of behavior is leading.

“OK. I am, I’ll see you there,” he said as he slipped quietly out the door, knowing that the storm only calms when I’m left alone. And it did. After I cried again to God about missing my son, He helped me find something to wear, smoothed my puffy face and sent me out the door. It was a fantastic night.

If you’re a parent you know that life is sometimes measured and marked by significant occasions and junctures in life: birth, sickness, the victories and defeats, and the inevitable letting go. I still remember wearing sunglasses when I dropped my son Miles off at a college 800 miles from home. I was shocked by my own emotions. I thought I really couldn’t wait to send this 18 year old boy away! But I suddenly understood things were changing. Behold, he was becoming a man! Time to let go a little more, mama. Eight years later I danced with him at his wedding, a beautiful tradition I think, because it seems to be a great metaphor for life. Holding, loving and letting go.

Jake’s my baby, but I actually let go of a lot several years ago when I shipped him down south to a wonderful church and family that would love him and help him grow strong in Christ. It was a rescue mission, it was God’s direction for him, and again I cried as I drove away from the airport. But if this mom has learned anything at all, I’ve learned I can trust God with my boys. He has made them men that I am immeasurably proud of and I give Him ALL of the praise. So as I search for something to wear, and think about this next chapter of his life, which will be a life-long chapter with his lovely new wife, I feel a little like I did putting him on a plane, or a school bus. A mother of boys sends her little man out into the world, to build and conquer, to love and to cherish. But first, let’s have this last dance: holding, loving and letting go. Just don’t say anything if you see me in sunglasses.

April 23, 2012

An Anchor in the Storm

: Life can be unpredictable…

My husband and I had just settled into a booth at one of our favorite breakfast spots yesterday. It was a Saturday, a beautiful spring morning at the end of school vacation week, so the atmosphere seemed happy and boisterous for the small coffee shop with an upbeat mix of families, tourists, and couples like us hungry for waffles and omelets and buckets of coffee. Our waitress, a young girl who looked to be about a senior in high school, gave us menus with a smile. A minute later another young girl who wore a waitress apron appeared at our table, looking dazed and apologizing for poor service. I was going to tell her we didn’t notice, but she jumped ahead of me, telling me they were all very upset this morning.

“A woman who works here found out her son was dead this morning. He was twenty four. He didn’t wake up.” I realize the waitress is telling us this because she just needs to tell someone, this is close to her and she is stunned.

My husband and I expressed our sympathy and assured her we were okay. Strange how time will stop suddenly for us like that. Anyone who remembers 9/11 can recall the ‘other-worldliness” of the moment, as if slowly waking up in a different place, wondering if life will ever be the same. But unless the tragedy is yours, you will do everything you can to make life the same again, to find that comfortable groove and roll on. “Life goes on,” we say and we remember 9/11 on 9/11. Unless it was your son or daughter or husband or mother…

I grew up under the shadow of uncertainty that follows traumatic loss. Every time a child or young person died, my mother would get that peculiar far-off look in her eyes and slowly shake her head.

“Someone’s life will never be the same”, she would say. She knew. She lost a child at age 36. And we all knew she was right. It was a bomb that detonated inside our family, inside our lives, imploding in on ourselves and eventually scattering us like refugees, learning to survive on our own, emotionally feral. Her words echoed like a cannon shot when I lost my son. “Nothing will ever be the same.” Mama was right. But unlike my mother, I had an anchor for my soul. I admit at times the rope to that anchor was stretched to the last thread. But it held. And it held my family too.

I felt so suddenly sad, sitting in the booth with my menu in front of me, on this bright sunny April morning, and distracted, thinking of a mom somewhere, a mom with that awful gaping wound in her soul. “My son…” I’m grateful for my husband, who over the years has become accustomed to my bouts of sudden melancholy, and who didn’t look annoyed or roll his eyes when I began to tell him about something I’ve noticed in graveyards. This is over eggs and corned beef hash.

“I noticed that several times I’ve seen a grave of a child, then next to it, the mother”, I say, waiting and looking at him to see if he gets it. He does. “The mother dies after the child?”

I nod. “Soon after.” I pause again. “I can understand that. You die from a broken heart. ”

I can remember wanting the peace and quiet of the cool earth around me, the sanctuary of the cemetery, the absolute craziness in thinking that this would bring relief, to lie down next to my son and sleep. God, in His great mercy, understands that kind of sorrow more than any person can. His compassion fails not.

This morning in church, the pastor read part of an email he received from a missionary in Sierra Leone. This couple lost two daughters in one week recently to malaria, ages five and two. In his brokenness he said these words, “We were created for a place much better than this.” He had an anchor also. He understood; this is not our home. In fact he called this life a “temporary assignment”. He and his wife will survive the storm because of the light of hope set in the darkness before them. That small light will become a beacon of God’s glory.

I am still thinking of the waitress whose son didn’t wake up and praying she is anchored too, for this type of storm is like no other. I don’t want her to be another grave next to her child’s. For this woman I don’t know whose son did not wake up, to the couple holding their dying daughter, nothing will ever be the same. Except for this: Jesus is an anchor for the soul. His compassion fails not. And that makes all the difference in this very unpredictable world.

“