A Mother's work is never done

For some, the loss of a mother is a sudden thing, the result of an illness or accident that sneaks up, as one poet said, like a bike in the night. For others like me, it is a slow, difficult process brought on by age and the loss of a lifetime in agonizing bits and pieces. The mind and the body slow with time, like a handwound clock, until it eventually stops.

Which fate is more painful for those left behind with their memories, I don't know. What I do know, however, is that there are lessons in each for those children willing to look and listen.

It takes courage to assume the role of parent to an aging mother who reverts to childlike behavior. It takes patience to repeat things, again and again, in a tone as fresh and unpatronizing as the first. It takes faith to believe in the meaning of life when the life before you seems to have lost so much meaning and been so utterly abandoned. It takes hope to go on another day.

I wish I could say that I have managed to maintain those virtues with constancy and dignity, but in reality my courage, patience, faith and hope are fluid things whose highs and lows are tied to the things that reach the busy shoreline of my days. Work, children and grandchildren, and the ever-constant demands of daily life all compete for my time and energy. And, I am greedy- I want them all.

And so, my mother's days of teaching me are not yet over. From the haze of her not-so-golden years, she continues to prod me to try harder and be a better person. She instructs me on how to prioritize and pull from deep within myself the ability to do what I had never thought I could ever do.

The wheels of the bike in the night turn slowly for us, but this Mother's Day, we can be grateful that life, with all of its limits, imperfections and disappointments, has given us some more time to share good things together. My mother may not remember that, but I will.

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