I thought I knew everything there was to know about my mother. Boy was I wrong! She loved my father until the day he died and never considered remarrying. “Till death us do part.” That promise was not just until HIS death but through and until hers as well. He was her one and only husband and the vow she took in church on her wedding day in 1946 was a sacrosanct pledge.
She successfully raised eight children, two of whom were still minors when dad passed away. She buried one daughter because of a myriad of complications with diabetes. She became grandmother to seven and great grandmother to five.
I have come to realize that she was so much more than a wife, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. She was the glue which silently held my family together. What I never knew about her until recently, because I never really took the time to discover, was that she had hopes and dreams for her life that had nothing whatever to do with the life she lived.
All her plans were quietly discarded and put on the back burner while the front burner was occupied being a dutiful wife, mother, grandmother, and eventually great grandmother.
Mom is eighty-five now and suffers the ravages of time and Parkinson’s disease. Of the seven remaining children, I have become her permanent care giver. This has allowed me to get to know her in ways I never considered or even dreamed possible. In addition to tending to her rapidly diminishing physical capabilities, I have begun learning about my mother not just as a mother but as a woman in her own right.
Mom is not always coherent these days. Parkinson’s Related Dementia (PRD) is taking some of her memories away. When she is alert, we talk about ... things ... Sometimes she talks about my father and their life together, but she often strays off and takes on a distant look as she gazes into the past, remembering her life as a child and a young woman.
Our conversations will begin with simply, seemingly inconsequential, topics but then she speaks to me of things her mother did or days with her grandfather or her time in school. It’s amazing that she can remember the boy who sat behind her in the fifth grade, but she often can’t remember what we had for dinner the previous night.
I learned recently that one of her burning desires as a child was to become a “dress designer.” When I asked her why she didn’t pursue this, her reply was just a shrugged shoulder and the simple comment, “because I got married and starting having children.”
Mom never complained. She would never acknowledge that she gave up her plans for the future or that she was in any way unhappy with the choices she made. But I can’t help wishing she had been able to live out the fantasies she had as a girl.
Was she happy with her life? I think she was content and for her that is really all that mattered. She did what was expected of her and she did it well. And I thank her for all the sacrifices I now know she made for my benefit and that of my siblings.
She was and is an exceptional woman. I only hope I can become half the woman she is. I am truly blessed because of her and I thank God every day for her presence.
