For those who might not have noticed, today was Mother's Day. I sent much of today thinking about my mother, who passed away nearly four years ago. It is hard to believe that that much time has passed since then. While I do miss her, her cognitive abilities were failing, and it was not clear how much longer she would have been able to live independently. It was probably a blessing that she went when she did, though we all would have preferred she not have had to experience the pain of terminal cancer.
In any case, I thought I'd share some of my memories of my mother tonight.
First, a word from our sponsors:
Many powerful and pithy diaries are published every day here on Daily Kos. The Top Comments diary series reviews the best comments of the day, where "best" can mean most recommended, most knowledgeable, most passionate, most appropriate in context, or just plain most funny. Any kossack can nominate a comment or three for Top Comments. All one has to do is send an e-mail with link(s) to the comment(s) to topcomments-[at]-gmail-[dot]-com. even if you don't nominate, stop by anyway because you never know when someone else has nominated one of your comments! Then stick around awhile and chat!
As I am in Indiana, and my mother's grave is in Baltimore, I was not able to visit. Indeed, I really only have the opportunity to visit her grave when I visit my sister's family over Christmas holidays. I think she would understand the situation.
My mother was a strong-willed woman. She crossed the Atlantic in 1947 in order to married my father, who had met her in 1945 in Lyon, France, and eventually proposed to her. She had no assurance that there would be anybody waiting for her when she arrived. Many of the young women made the journey only to find that they had been abandoned, and had to find their way back to their native countries. My mother knew that that was a possibility, but she took the chance and came anyway.
While she never would have called herself a feminist, she worked outside the home for most of her adult life at a time when most of the women of her generation did not. Her salary was a solid contribution to the finances of our household. It turned into more than that when my father had his first heart attack in 1967. Needless to say, my father's salary provided most of the family's income. He was a plumber, but did not work for a union shop, so there was no workman's compensation. We had to eke by on my mother's much more modest bank-teller's salary during my father's two month convalescence (one month in the hospital, and another at home; it amazes me that my father spent an entire month in the hospital, when I consider how hospitals show their patients to the door as soon as they possibly can these days). Years later, my mother told me how hard those days were, since, not only was hers the only family income, but paying all the bills suddenly became her sole responsibility. I was seven at the time, and while I was worried about my father's health, I was blissfully unaware of the family's precarious finances during those days. She single-handedly pulled the family through that crisis. (Afterward, my parents reorganized their budgeting in order to better prepare for such emergencies. This turned out to be crucially necessary, as my father had three more heart attacks before 1974, when he retired.)
My mother was affectionate and romantic. She was a fan of French and Italian opera. Her favorite opera was Puccini's La Boheme. I think that my love of music comes mostly from her. However, neither of my parents were big fans of rock and roll when it emerged in popular culture, and I think they viewed the whole '60s generational revolution with dismay. My mother being French, she had very particular views of how one should present oneself in public. This did not involve clothing that was worn or had holes. Holes in clothing were anathema to my mother. I can still hear her say "Disgraziato!" when she saw young people in church wearing jeans with holes or tears. Dressing down was something she never understood, and it was the origin of many arguments between her and my sister, as you might imagine.
After my father passed away in 1982, she lived alone for the last 25 years of her life. She was not interested in remarriage, and she had no desire to move out of the house where she had made her marriage and raised her children. She spend about a decade volunteering for the Maryland School for the Blind. When she learned that the only way she could be buried in the same plot as her husband and her mother was to be cremated, that sealed the deal. And so that's where her Earthly remains are, in the same cemetary as both of my grandmothers, an uncle (who did not survive infancy), a great-grandfather, and one set of great-great-grandparents (from the Bohemian side of the family).
I'll end by inviting readers to share something about your mothers. Also, here is a link to a Story Corps conversation with a very spirited grandmother named Kay Wang. My mother was not like Ms. Wang, but the story is both funny and touching. Finally, I feel I have to link to marykk's Mother's Day diary. It's much more cogent than mine.
Now, on to the comment!
From middleagedhousewife:
I found this marvelous, astute comment by pundette on what beauty and love in life really are, and how it is easily seen and found when one fully feels the temporary nature of one's own life (she puts it so much better than I that I don't want to attempt to describe her comment further -- just read it and see for yourself). It seems somehow especially apt for Mother's Day -- the day celebrated for bringing new human life into the world and nurturing and protecting it in such a way that the world is as safe and beautiful and loving place as it can be. From bigjacbigjacbigjac's diary, Daily bigjac: There's no love left inside me.
From Xenocrypt:
andyroo312 perfectly summed up "A Single Man" in five words as we discussed movies in an open thread.
From your humble diarist:
I liked this comment by isabelle hayes in twigg's diary My Apology to Black Kos and Others.
Apparently, Im a frayed knot's favorite Beatle's song about a mother is mine also. Posted in BFSkinner's diary Songs about Mothers.
Leo Flinnwood makes an interesting observation regarding the opinions of particular demographics of the electorate as analyzed in the new poll from the Pew Research Center, featured in David Jarman's front page story Pew typologies: Beyond mere right and left.