Remembering a Mother's Love

Mom fully expected to live at least as long as her mother who died just before her 94th birthday. She always cared for her physical body and had a dynamic personality. She would have celebrated her 92nd birthday on May 5 this year. I have very few pictures taken with my mom in the days before digital cameras and smartphones. The picture on the left was taken after my graduation as a physiotherapist in 1975. I was 20 years old and Mom had just turned 43. As is the case in some families, we could have been sisters within that age gap. After all, there were 18 years between the oldest and youngest child in my husband's family. I think about this often now as in about 11 years I will be the same age as Mom was when she died. 

Morbid thoughts? Definitely not, but I am reminded of the importance of living each day fully and without regret. I am reading Toshikazu Kawaguchi's book Before the Coffee Gets Cold which explores the question; what would you change if you could travel back in time? (The people who travel to the past in the café cannot change the present or the future.) If I had a few more minutes with Mom, would I ask a burning question or tell her how much she was loved? The book is fictional but reminds the reader to pursue honesty, love and forgiveness in the present. We cannot change the past but we can influence the future.

I like that the liturgical church calendar celebrates Easter for the forty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday. There is plenty of time for scriptural reflection on the meaning of the resurrection and our hope of eternal life. Recent readings have been from 1 John 3. 1 John 3:2 begins by saying,

"Dear friends, now we are children of God, 

and what we will be has not yet been made known."

We don't know what the other side of death looks like but the rest of the verse says.

"But we know that when Christ appears,

we shall be like him,

for we shall see him as he is."

Our grandchildren planted seeds in plaster planters in Sunday School on Easter Sunday. The seeds have sprouted and they were excited to show me the growing shoots. I asked one of them, "What did you plant?" They didn't know the answer. We will have to wait and see as the plant matures. 

...what we will be has not yet been made known

We are imperfect, a work in progress at any age, but hopefully with signs of increasing maturity as the years add up.

Today is the 11th anniversary of Mom's death. I do not envision my mother as a guardian angel or a spirit I can conjure up for a consultation. I miss her and would love to confide in her again. My task is to carry her love for God, her family and others allowing it to grow and overflow in my life. 

No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, 

God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 

1 John 4:12