Mother's Day

I woke up this Mother’s Day thinking about my mine, who died two weeks ago at 102.

If you’re expecting a column about how this day is going to be painful, or how cruel it is to lose one’s mother just before Mother’s Day, you’re mistaken.

How can I possibly feel sorry for myself when I had my mother for 63 years? That’s pretty darn good in anyone’s book. Hardly any friends my age still have their mothers and if they do, theirs certainly aren’t in the shape mine was.

My brother and sister, who are sixteen and nine years older than I, were even luckier. My brother, Jerry, had his mother for 79 years. Several years ago I asked mom what Jerry had given her for Mothers Day. “He sent a beautiful arrangement of flowers with a note that says, ‘After 75 Mother’s Days I’m running out of gift ideas,’” she said, laughing.  

My siblings and I have known for years, as mom moved past elderly and into the realm of ancient, how lucky we were not only to have her but to have a mother who was still eager to learn new things, still looking to the future and who, as all good mothers do, loved us unconditionally.

So while I’ve deleted without reading emails inviting me to order last minute gifts, and have shifted my brain into park when I see TV commercials for Mother’s Day, I am not dwelling on my loss. Mom wouldn’t want that. She went out on her own terms, exactly the way she wanted to. For one day out of the 37,322 she lived -- her final one -- she was sick, but she didn’t know it because she had suffered a stroke.

That’s something to celebrate this Mother’s Day -- that and having my mother for as long as I did.