Mother's Day Memories

windbag said...
It's been fifteen years since my mom passed away. Her birthday is May 9, mine is May 8. We shared birthdays and Mother's Days over the years, all jumbled together. I never really thought about how few birthday cakes she had, just the leftovers from mine. I remember one May Day I hung a basket of flowers on her bedroom doorknob. She wasn't well, suffered depression and stayed in bed most of the time. I recall watching the basket off and on all day, hoping that she would find it. It eventually disappeared behind the door.

Despite her illness, she was a talented lady. She could kick the ever living shit out of a piano and did so all the time. We always had music going in the house. I used to stand down by the bass notes of the piano, waiting to hit the lowest note that fit whatever she was playing. Somewhere we have a recording of a wedding she played, where she played a pump organ, feet pumping the bellows and fingers flying over the keyboard.

About a week before my little girl was born, my mom suffered a stroke. I traveled up to Watkins Glen to be there, but she suffered a second, massive stroke and died before I got there. When I got there, they had a machine pumping her heart and pushing air in and out of her lungs, but she was gone.

Just before she passed, she motioned for my dad to hand her a tissue box and pencil. The initial stroke a couple of days earlier had left her almost speechless. On the back, she wrote the words to the chorus of an old hymn:

Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe,
Sin had left a crimson stain,
 He washed it white as snow.

She handed it to my dad and slipped away. Fifteen years. She would have been 83 this year.

I whispered "Happy Mother's Day" on my way to work this morning.