Mother's Day

 

May 8, 2022

Bishop visits church. That ends in deviled eggs.

Mother’s Day. Mother has been gone since 1974.How accurate is my remembrance? I have tried to go behind the curtain. The first thing– and something I may not have understood before–is her profound privacy. Did anyone know what was in her heart? That I inherited from her in full measure. She was brave and moral. My father’s morality arose from fear of being caught in the wrong. That too I inherited from her, though with the addition of anger and sometimes brooding malice that was foreign to her. Her delicate health made it heroic for her to have a child, and then two. In this is the self-sacrifice of all mothers. When I think back I can conjure no moment when I am certain I gave her delight or satisfaction, and many, many that might have hurt her. As time went on, her husband was cruel to her. Did I make that up in any way? Did I ape his cruelty? I do not know. Not knowing is a dark weight in the heart. In horrible moments, I think of her dying on the operating table in Cleveland, and the thought in her head, Thank God. When was her life not sad? When could she not look at her brothers and cousins and see how things might have been for her? She was made for a different world, kinder, closer, natural, in contrast to the coldness she must have felt from us. I regret every time I argued with her. I was fighting so hard to be myself. My secrecy fought for room beside hers. I regret first among all regretted things that I did not see her before she died. I didn’t think she would die. It’s a victory that I weep for her almost half a century later. I pray that she had victories in her life that I knew nothing of.