Friday, July 30, 2004
Happy Heavenly Birthday, Mom
Today is my mother's birthday. She would be 72 years old if she was still walking on this side of the ground.
For a lot of us, our mothers are the first loves in our life. That special person who God chose to be our life's guardian in our youth and who nurtured us into what we are today certainly has much influence over who we are in essence. How we relate to others in life can be traced back to our relationship with our maternal parent in our childhood days.
The infant that needs its mother's arms lives on within us. Some still have their mothers here with them today. Some have suffered a mother's early death in their earthly walk. Some struggle with a mother's long illness on a constant basis. Some never knew their mother. Some have had extremely bad relationships with Mom.
Other have or had good fortune in their interactions with mothers.
The roughest week in my life was one of burying my Mom at the same funeral home and cemetery where I was working at the time. I can hardly express what it was like to be in such a position of having to deal with death on a daily basis in my vocation at the time and then have it be my own mother when it came time for her passing.
Like any job, it becomes routine until something drastically alters that schedule in one form or another. My altering that week was the death of my first love in life and the necessity of having to attend to arrangements where I worked. It was a very, very tough workload that week, as you may imagine.
My mom was a little woman who could get feisty when she wanted to. On the other hand, she had a heart so big at times that it wouldn't fit into the state of Alaska. She grew up very poor and lived in chicken coops and under trees for a time in her early youth. My ancestry on her side could have played all the parts of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath without any practice.
I can remember going to pick cotton with her and my Dad when I was 4 years old and Mom would give me a 10-lb potato sack to fill with cotton. I'd dump it into her larger bag when I had it brimming with those fluffy, white fibers. I really didn't realize it back then but my first job was with my mother.
To cut through the years, eventually the family got squared away and those cotton fields became a long-ago memory. We lived pretty good throughout my high school years. At not time did I ever go without food, clothing, and shelter because a mother's love and a father's sense of duty did all the things they knew toward the union of their love--which was in the form of me.
My mother had an intelligence that would make the preacher and the scholar cringe when she had questions for them. She would study a lot of nights away in an honest search for higher meaning in this life. I spent many hours with her in study, debate, and questioning of all facets of life around us.
She could play several musical instruments and would sing to my brothers, sister, and I at night when we were in bed until we fell asleep to the soothing strums of the guitar and her smooth alto singing voice.
Later on, when I was speaking at churches and playing music in several different concert formats, I would deliberately scan the crowds and always find my momma's little smile and proud eyes looking back at me.
Her gifts passed on to me were there to see with her eyes and mind as she acknowledged my moment in the sun without a hint of jealousy or haughtiness inside her. It was unlike her to do much for herself, but she constantly reached out to others to give and give without the expectation of anything in return. It was a source of frustration, at times, to try and do something in return for her because she was so adamant about using whatever resource we tried to reciprocate with for our own needs and wants at the time.
Mom believed God was good, knowledge was power, and wisdom came when one was capable of handling it. She didn't trust institutions much because of what she called a haughtiness in trying to make everyone like them instead of who the person was in essence.
She wasn't one to put on airs to please you. She possessed that country pride that quietly said she was fine, thank you, without you meddling into her affairs. She had an independent spirit that came rooted in a history of common people who toiled hard and didn't demand much in return.
She owned a strength that was a far cry from a cotton field's urgency, but was engrained with circumstances and lots that life tossed her way. I don't find much that disputes those messages she passed on to me throughout my life.
They say a real mark of maturity is the ability to see our mothers simply as human beings--lovable, fallible, interesting, and imperfect--just like ourselves. It's difficult to see beyond the "Mom" role we grew up with and to then see our mothers for what, and who, they really are outside of that personification.
Later in life, I began to see my mother as who she really was outside of her "Mom" image, and I loved those parts of her as much as the mom part, I'm proud to say.
We didn't have a perfect relationship. We had a mom-son relationship. There were times, too, when we didn't see eye to eye on many things. Those times took us both into a research mode as we both studied privately within our souls to only later share the lessons learned with each other.
Mainly, though, it kept us intertwined in the circle of love and growth that a mother and child share as a bond in the pattern that God saw fit to establish a long time ago.
At the time of her passing, I did the best I could to make it right for her. I did my job as she always did--with total effort toward being entire in effort, with complete respect towards the needs of others, and with a take-charge method that spoke of the quiet confidence she passed on to me. She would have expected no less.
At her funeral, it was uplifting to see a packed parlor of people who came to respect one who respected them back. All the wheelchairs lined up along the funeral parlor walls with cerebral palsy patients she taught and assisted were overt testimonies to her giving heart and compassion towards others with less in life in different ways than she had at times.
I, her firstborn, during this time today of remembrance of her birthday, give total and unconditional love to my first love in life.
God bless you, Momma. You make me proud to be of you.
For a lot of us, our mothers are the first loves in our life. That special person who God chose to be our life's guardian in our youth and who nurtured us into what we are today certainly has much influence over who we are in essence. How we relate to others in life can be traced back to our relationship with our maternal parent in our childhood days.
The infant that needs its mother's arms lives on within us. Some still have their mothers here with them today. Some have suffered a mother's early death in their earthly walk. Some struggle with a mother's long illness on a constant basis. Some never knew their mother. Some have had extremely bad relationships with Mom.
Other have or had good fortune in their interactions with mothers.
The roughest week in my life was one of burying my Mom at the same funeral home and cemetery where I was working at the time. I can hardly express what it was like to be in such a position of having to deal with death on a daily basis in my vocation at the time and then have it be my own mother when it came time for her passing.
Like any job, it becomes routine until something drastically alters that schedule in one form or another. My altering that week was the death of my first love in life and the necessity of having to attend to arrangements where I worked. It was a very, very tough workload that week, as you may imagine.
My mom was a little woman who could get feisty when she wanted to. On the other hand, she had a heart so big at times that it wouldn't fit into the state of Alaska. She grew up very poor and lived in chicken coops and under trees for a time in her early youth. My ancestry on her side could have played all the parts of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath without any practice.
I can remember going to pick cotton with her and my Dad when I was 4 years old and Mom would give me a 10-lb potato sack to fill with cotton. I'd dump it into her larger bag when I had it brimming with those fluffy, white fibers. I really didn't realize it back then but my first job was with my mother.
To cut through the years, eventually the family got squared away and those cotton fields became a long-ago memory. We lived pretty good throughout my high school years. At not time did I ever go without food, clothing, and shelter because a mother's love and a father's sense of duty did all the things they knew toward the union of their love--which was in the form of me.
My mother had an intelligence that would make the preacher and the scholar cringe when she had questions for them. She would study a lot of nights away in an honest search for higher meaning in this life. I spent many hours with her in study, debate, and questioning of all facets of life around us.
She could play several musical instruments and would sing to my brothers, sister, and I at night when we were in bed until we fell asleep to the soothing strums of the guitar and her smooth alto singing voice.
Later on, when I was speaking at churches and playing music in several different concert formats, I would deliberately scan the crowds and always find my momma's little smile and proud eyes looking back at me.
Her gifts passed on to me were there to see with her eyes and mind as she acknowledged my moment in the sun without a hint of jealousy or haughtiness inside her. It was unlike her to do much for herself, but she constantly reached out to others to give and give without the expectation of anything in return. It was a source of frustration, at times, to try and do something in return for her because she was so adamant about using whatever resource we tried to reciprocate with for our own needs and wants at the time.
Mom believed God was good, knowledge was power, and wisdom came when one was capable of handling it. She didn't trust institutions much because of what she called a haughtiness in trying to make everyone like them instead of who the person was in essence.
She wasn't one to put on airs to please you. She possessed that country pride that quietly said she was fine, thank you, without you meddling into her affairs. She had an independent spirit that came rooted in a history of common people who toiled hard and didn't demand much in return.
She owned a strength that was a far cry from a cotton field's urgency, but was engrained with circumstances and lots that life tossed her way. I don't find much that disputes those messages she passed on to me throughout my life.
They say a real mark of maturity is the ability to see our mothers simply as human beings--lovable, fallible, interesting, and imperfect--just like ourselves. It's difficult to see beyond the "Mom" role we grew up with and to then see our mothers for what, and who, they really are outside of that personification.
Later in life, I began to see my mother as who she really was outside of her "Mom" image, and I loved those parts of her as much as the mom part, I'm proud to say.
We didn't have a perfect relationship. We had a mom-son relationship. There were times, too, when we didn't see eye to eye on many things. Those times took us both into a research mode as we both studied privately within our souls to only later share the lessons learned with each other.
Mainly, though, it kept us intertwined in the circle of love and growth that a mother and child share as a bond in the pattern that God saw fit to establish a long time ago.
At the time of her passing, I did the best I could to make it right for her. I did my job as she always did--with total effort toward being entire in effort, with complete respect towards the needs of others, and with a take-charge method that spoke of the quiet confidence she passed on to me. She would have expected no less.
At her funeral, it was uplifting to see a packed parlor of people who came to respect one who respected them back. All the wheelchairs lined up along the funeral parlor walls with cerebral palsy patients she taught and assisted were overt testimonies to her giving heart and compassion towards others with less in life in different ways than she had at times.
I, her firstborn, during this time today of remembrance of her birthday, give total and unconditional love to my first love in life.
God bless you, Momma. You make me proud to be of you.
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I had to read it two times. This would be a great post to repost again on Mother's Day. It would have to be a hard thing working there at the time. Funerals are hard enough for people we don't even know, but who would you want taking care of mother, a stranger? If we look at it like that, it was such a great honor and I'm sure she liked it alot.
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