destabee | Not your usual mother's day post (Reply)

In 1972 my mother awoke to what would be her last Mother's Day. I would like to say that I made that day special for her. Unfortunately I don't remember anything about that day or any other day in the time my mother's life overlapped with mine. However, given that I was only five, I think the odds were low that I helped give her the day she deserved. I have no real memories of my mother on vague feelings and a few mental snapshots.

Based on those feelings and things my sister Sharon (actually half-sister) has said, it seems that my relationship was very close -- the words worship and shadow were used to describe it. I know that if you spread the snapshots of me out chronologically, you can tell exactly which ones were taken before her death and which after. The sparkle and the smile suddenly disappear.

I would like to think that we would have remained close but I have no way of knowing if that would have been true. For many years the guiding question in my life was, "Would my mother be proud/pleased with the things I have done and who I have become?" I am told I am much like my mother in personality, mannerisms, and many aspects of appearance.

These are the things I know about my mother though they don't add up to much:

According to my sister, her favorite song was "The Old Rugged Cross."

According to Sharon, yellow roses were her favorite flower.

She took care of lots of people, many not because of family obligations or official duties but just because they needed help. One of my snapshot memories is of her baking bread to take various people and another is being surrounded by baskets of laundry in preparation for going to the coin laundry.

She deserved far better treatment than she got from the men in her life. It seems that both her husbands were abusive in different ways. She put up with physical abuse from her first husband until he abused one of her children. Within hours of him crossing that line, she had moved out of the house and was on her own. The story is that she married the man I refer to as my father (some question about that) only after he begged her to do so telling her that he had only six months to live. He outlived her by more 12 years.

Based on photos, I come by my green thumb/soul through my maternal line. For many years after her death, a large pool of moss rose (portulaca) surrounded the gas meter in the front yard and covered the top of the cellar. I also have photos of my grandmother near rusted out wash tubs filled with flowers.

From photos and snippets of conversations, my mother kept food on the table by working very hard. At various points she: picked cotton (even while pregnant), waited tables, cleaned houses and did laundry for others, worked as a nurse's aide, did pest control, plucked chickens in a poultry processing plant.

She sewed, quilted, and did embroidery. I have a sewing machine that my father gave her a year or so before she died. I also have a shirt that she made for me using the fancy stitches on that machine. Evidently once upon a time Sharon had a matching one. I also have a quilt that she tied; unfortunately my younger sister Diane didn't care for it properly and it is severely damaged. The embroidery I know about because there was a drawer of pillowcases, napkins and table runners with her work in the house where I grew up. I wonder what ever happened to those.

She was a member of the Assembly of God church. Based on the number of signatures in the registry from her funeral she was well loved by church members and the community.

She canned and preserved food. I remember being about 10 or 11 and finally cleaning all of those out of the cellar.

She was born in the early 1930s in Kansas. The early years of her life would have been spent in an area ravaged by the dust bowl.

She was married twice. She had the first of eight babies at 14. Two of those babies, twins, were stillborn. The first six births were to her first husband. She had her final child, my younger sister, at 37. With my younger sister and with me she was pregnant at the same time as a daughter and a daughter-in-law. She saw her first 4 children marry. She saw the first four of eleven grandchildren born. She never got to see any of her children graduate from high school. My sister Sharon was the first to do that but not until four months after her death. According to Sharon, seeing her children educated was one of her biggest dreams.

She died about two weeks before she turned 41 as the result of a malignant brain tumor.

Her name was Cora Mae.

I wish I would have had the chance to know her because all evidence suggests that she was one amazing woman. I know my sister Sharon is and I imagine that much of who she is reflects who my mother was. If there really is something after life on this planet, I hope her rewards are rich.