Mother’s Day

Love Without End

~ Nancy Malcolm ~ 4 Comments

             The Greek origin of the name Margaret is pearl, a thing of great rarity and worth.  My mother’s name is Margaret.  I have no real memories of her, as she died probably two and a half years after this photo was taken.

            As I look at her, looking at me, I know I was loved.  I don’t remember her voice, but I can almost hear her saying, “I love you.”

            I’ve never had a Mother’s Day with her that I am aware of, but I honor her just the same.  The young mother she was.  The love she gave, the tenderness that this picture shows.  I cherish it.        

  I cherish her.

Most of my own experience as a mother has been fraught with questions and uncertainty.  “Am I doing this right?”  As if any of us really knows the one truly right way to mother.  It’s mainly a lot of trial and error, flipping a coin, and lots of praying.

My daughters have had to grow up without a grandmother.  It seems so unfair, and it saddens me to think of the loving relationship they missed.  My beautiful mother was not allowed to grow older and be the grandmother she would have wanted to be.

Whatever good I have done as a mother – whatever I have done right, I owe it all to a power greater than myself, and to my mother.  Somehow she would whisper encouragement to me on the flutter of Cardinal wings or show me the way to go with a gentle nudge or knowing.  She might not have been here for me in all the ways I needed, but she sent a charge of angels that ensured I would grow up to be okay.  She made sure I would have photographs and mementos from those who knew her well. She made sure this photo would be unearthed from a box of old pictures almost exactly on my seventieth birthday.

My mother knew I would need her love and so she sent it to me through other souls, close friends, and strangers.  She sent her love to me on sunsets and early morning walks on the beach.  She sent me love through faith and heartfelt prayers. She will always send her love until we meet again among the stars.  Mothers don’t just love their children every now and then, it’s eternal love, a forever love. 

It’s love without end.  Amen.

All Is Well

~ Nancy Malcolm ~ 2 Comments

            It’s Mother’s Day and I am filled with a tender longing that never really leaves me, only swells larger every May.  There are countless books, blog posts, and podcasts that encourage us, motherless daughters, to celebrate our missing moms or sit with our grief in hopes of calming that anxiety that threatens to destroy us.

            It’s suggested to talk about your mother; say her name aloud, share memories (if you have them), and honor her in some meaningful way.  I’ll probably call my big brother because he knew her best.  He is my only link to her, my lifeline of memories.  Over the years his memories have become mine, for which I will forever be grateful.

            When I was younger, the loss of my mother felt like I was floundering in outer space, not tethered in any way.  I was slipping away and there was no one to catch hold and ground me.  As I have aged, my grief feels more like a heavy wool blanket that suffocates me under the weight of sadness.

            My mother’s name is Margaret.  Margaret Arminta Lane Claughton.  She is laid to rest next to my father in the Llano Cemetery in Amarillo, Texas, where she has resided since 1958.  A lifetime ago. 

If I lived there still, I would take flowers to her grave.  But, since I don’t and I know she isn’t really there and there is no flower delivery to Heaven, I will buy flowers for myself in her honor, which is something I have never done before.

            My girls are coming over for a late lunch on Saturday.  We’re celebrating Mother’s Day and my birthday, which feels okay given the space I am sometimes in.  I want to sob and throw a fit, and selfishly sit and stare completely immobilized.  But I always try to rally where my girls are concerned and welcome their intent to honor me, and I genuinely want to honor them.  After all, I tell myself, we are among the living.  “Let the dead bury the dead.”

            I’m grateful for my sweet daughters, yet I miss having a mother, even sixty-five years later, I struggle.

            I remember being the only one in my elementary class who didn’t have a mother, and as we sat at our desks with crayons and paper, I was embarrassed as we made our annual Mother’s Day cards.  I sat silently coloring away at a card I did not want to make.  I gave mine to my dad and we took it to the cemetery on Sunday after church.  I was the only child without a mother and yet we all had to make a card.  I hope things have changed by now, and while I don’t think my teachers meant to be insensitive, the aftereffects were far-reaching and have stayed with me to this day.

            There are other little girls in this world, even older girls and women who are facing this first Mother’s Day without their mother.  I have no sage advice.  No ‘10 Steps to Honor and Grieve Your Mother.’  My journey has not been neat and tidy.  It has been and still is messy and heartbreakingly overwhelming at times.

            I find that when I am honest and let my heart feel what it needs to, I am sooner to breathe and feel a sigh of relief that everything will be okay.  Sitting in a quiet, calm place, I put my hand over my heart and whisper ‘all is well,’ until I believe it.  All is well.

            Just for today, just for this Mother’s Day, I will buy my mother the flowers I always wanted to give her.  I will set the table with her Dessert Rose dishes and enjoy my daughters and grandson, and it will be enough.  Actually, more than enough.

All is well, I whisper to that little girl within me.  All is well.         

Hello, Old Friend

~ Nancy Malcolm ~ Leave a comment

Hello, Old Friend

            It matters not if your mother has been gone for six weeks, six years or sixty-four years, as mine has.  A mother’s love was our first love and remains that anchor always.

            Sometimes unexpectedly, I will feel an ache deep inside that sits heavy like a boulder and has the makings of an avalanche.  I go about my day, my life, as if there was no weight upon my heart, but my insides recognize this visitor.  I am reminded of it, this faint knowledge that it’s almost Mother’s Day, and I hope the rockslide of emotions don’t start.  I want to stay the course and keep everything in its place.

            I love being a mother, myself, although I have endured times of angst as I stumbled along trying to do “it” right.  Being a mother and grandmother has been my biggest blessing.  My daughters have grown up right before my eyes and no longer make me macaroni angels or hand painted plaques that say, “Prayer Changes Things.” They are always so good to shower me with gifts and thoughtful cards that I save in a big box, safely tucked away.  Someday, when I am gone, they will find it and laugh at me for saving so much, but that’s alright, I could not bear to throw away their words or thoughtfulness.

            Yet, when it comes to Mother’s Day, I fall silent.  I feel uncertain of what to do with myself and I am deeply aware that the sadness I feel is not in aligned with the way most of the world thinks.

            I want to cry and sit alone with my sadness.  I want to look at pictures and have a cup of tea or a glass of wine.  And, at the same time I want to go with my daughters for a long walk among flowers and beautiful trees, feeling the sunshine on our faces, confirming I am alive.  My feelings are a contrast as day is to night. 

            I want to celebrate my mother.  I want to celebrate being a mother and my daughter being a mother.  But there’s that ache deep inside that wants nothing to do with sunshine, long walks or brunch.  That ache says, “You’re alone, so be alone. No one understands anyway.”  That ache makes me separate and odd because I hurt on a day others feel joy and gratitude.

            I’ve long ago made sense of being left motherless.  I understand that sometimes bad things happen to good people, and more than that, I understand that this ache will not kill me.  While there are times I thought it might, it has become an old friend, although unwanted, that is familiar and will retreat after a time. This old ache will go back to where it lives, underneath my heart, lodged over to the side.  But it will come back another time, perhaps unannounced, smaller in size. 

 Please don’t feel sorry for me, as that is not what I want.  I know I am okay.  I am not alone on this motherless journey; I know there are far too many who travel with me.  I want them to know it is fine to have feelings that go back and forth.  It is okay to have the ache and still want the sunshine.  It will not always hurt this bad, so go ahead and feel.  God in His wisdom has given us the ability to see both sides, to feel both sadness and sunshine. 

            “And gradually his memory slipped a little, as memories do, even those with so much love attached to them; as if there is an unconscious healing process within the mind which mends up in spite of our desperate determination never to forget.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds  

This Motherless Daughters’ Dream

~ Nancy Malcolm ~ Leave a comment

Mother's Day for a motherless daughter

In the spring when flowers come alive with vivid colors and my birthday, on the first of May has come and gone, I unconsciously start to feel anxious like I’m skating on a thin layer of ice.   My life gets smothered with unease and dread, my two old friends since childhood.  The dread of marking another year without my mother.  Another Mother’s Day to sit quietly by and watch the whole world celebrate.  Another milestone with no memory attached, just a blank hollow space that looks like the mother-shaped hole inside me.

My mother died of a brain tumor when I was four years old and now at sixty-seven, I still cannot conjure a voice or face or hand that might remind me of her.  I’ve never caught a whiff of her perfume lingering in the air and turned to see if she was near.  “Did she even wear perfume?”  I wonder.  

Lest you think me selfish and ungrateful, my appreciation and value of being a mother myself is at the top of my gratitude list.  I am grateful for the blessing that daughters and grandchildren bring.  I humbly acknowledge these beautiful gifts of life and what sweet music it is to my ears to hear them call me Mother or Nannie.  But, the little child in me struggles.  I struggle every year with those Hallmark card commercials and advertisements for “a free rose at brunch”.  I struggle with thoughts of envy and chide my friends who still have their mothers, to cherish this time before it slips away.

In the sixty-three years without my mother, I have never dreamed of her until just last year and even then, I did not see her face.  I often have asked God why.  “Please,” I would beg, “send me a dream or vision of her to let me know I am not alone.  Help me feel her presence.”  I’m always afraid I will forget her.  Afraid, my soul will not know hers when we meet again.

In my dream, everything and everyone was in black and white, except one person.  I was running down a crowded street and searching frantically for my mother.  I spotted someone in a bright red dress and I fought my way through until I reached the red dress and I touched her.  Her face never really came into focus, I just knew it was her from the thick brown hair and the red dress, the dress she was buried in, I was told.   As she turned around, I asked, “Are you, my mother?”  I remember thinking in my dream that I should hug her or pull her to me, but it was all very quiet and serene.  She nodded yes and gave me her hand.  We stood on that crowded street and looked at each other for a while.  It was quiet all around us, like in a bubble, and I felt she couldn’t stay very long.  I didn’t want to let go of her hand, but she let go first and touched my arm, saying, “I’ve been here all along.  You are going to be ok.  You are going to be just fine”, and with that, she was gone.

When I woke up, I could not believe that I had finally had a dream of my mother.  But, I felt sadly dissatisfied because it was fleeting and strangely generic.  I wanted longer.  I wanted her to hold me and explain her thoughts….tell me she loved me.  I wanted a reunion.  Was I being petulant, like a little child that didn’t get her way?

I have since had time to process this dream and think rationally, as best I can.  There is an old gospel song entitled, “We’ll Talk It Over” by the Gaither Vocal Band.  The gist of the song is that we only know in part why things happen in our lives, but when we get to heaven, we have a chance to ask God why and talk it over.

I don’t know why my mother had to die or why my brother and I were chosen to be among the motherless.   I may never know why my dream was short and took so long to come.  But, I can choose to believe that in the by and by, as the song says, I’ll have the chance to ask my Creator why and finally understand.

And, I can choose to believe what my mother said to me in my dream.  She has been with me all along, for if I search, I can recall her presence amidst a crisis or two and her hand in mine when I needed her most.  I can choose to believe that she has missed me as much as I have missed her, and in the by and by, we will meet again.

 

I am going to be ok.

I’m going to be just fine.

I know I will.

 

 

Mother’s Day

~ Nancy Malcolm ~ 1 Comment

Mother's Day

It’s almost Mother’s Day and for as long as I can remember, it has been a day occupied with countless emotions.

At times, I have approached this day with utter dread.  I dread the Hallmark card commercials and florist advertisements.  I scoff at those happy mother and child clichés, thinking how out of touch with reality they are.  Don’t they know that’s not the way it really is for some of us?

At other times, when my self-pity is at bay, I have so much joy and contentment.  I vividly remember my first Mother’s Day with my oldest daughter.  I recall opening the gift she and her dad had given me, an orange-flowered nightgown and robe.  We had a late big breakfast and later napped together on the couch.  I will always remember that feeling and have since had many, many lovely days with my girls.  I am amazed and proud and grateful to be a mother.

But, sometimes at the end of my Mother’s Day, I am suddenly taken aback.  I forgot her, I scold.  I forgot to remember that I am motherless.

I wish I could hire an investigator to find her, like the television show, Long Lost Family.  I fantasize that someone would locate her and we would have a wonderful reunion.  But alas, all inquiries stop short for the dead.

“Come on,” you may say, “It’s time to get over it…let her go.”  The reality is, this is “me” after more than sixty years of letting go.  I had no choice, except to do so, and now I can honestly say I feel contentment and even happiness despite the fact of her vacancy.  But, still….I miss her.  I miss not having a mother.  I feel cheated sometimes.

Every year I make a decision to celebrate Mother’s Day.  I do so by honoring her memory and acknowledging there is a glorious piece of her in me and in my girls.  She is with me, I know.

Abraham Lincoln once said: “I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me.  They have clung to me all of my life.”  I certainly believe this to be true.  I may not remember my mother’s prayers, but I know she breathed them as she said her goodbyes; I know she whispered into God’s ear to especially watch over my brother and me.  I have felt her prayers all of my life.

Mother’s Day is unique for everyone.  Many of us honor the memory of our mothers.  Some of us are fortunate enough to have our mothers nearby and able to celebrate a day and a lifetime of love.

However this Mother’s Day looks for you, I pray that there are peaceful, loving thoughts and heart connections.  I encourage you to be the last to let go of a long, tight hug.  Whether your celebration is lavish and boisterous, or a quiet, respectful chat at the grave site, I applaud you.  Happy Mother’s Day to all mother’s everywhere.