How perspectives change

Mother's Day was never a particularly big holiday at our house as I was growing up.  Once I left for college, it almost completely vanished from my life.  Later, most years I would remember to call Mom, and for a while I sent cards, but then I stopped doing that.  I rarely considered whether these omissions mattered to her, but when I did, I concluded that they must not have been important, or she would have said something.  Later still, when I finally did ask her, I learned that, of course, she would have liked at least a card and a phone call.  I never was good about the card, but I did start calling.

Today, of course, is the first Mother's Day I've experienced since Mom died, and I can't stop thinking about her.  I don't exactly regret my past failures to observe the holiday, though I certainly feel some guilt about all that I did not do for her.  What saddens me is that I will have no more opportunities to tell her Happy Mother's Day or even just that I love her.  This feeling will, I am sure, pass with time, but today it surrounds me, suffocates me, each breath a little harder for its presence. 

Mom did the best she could.  She raised strong children through rough times, and all three of us loved her and knew she loved us.  That may not sound like much, and I could certainly go on to detail at length all the many, many more things she accomplished, but those few are, in the end, about as much as any of us can ask as children or as parents. 

I would have called her today and rolled my eyes at her nattering, but I cannot.  Instead, I will send this last Mother's Day wish into the great electronic gestalt, and that will have to do.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.  I love you.