It’s almost over!
My already irregular heartbeat has done a few extra flips and blips today.  A few people have asked, cautiously, how it’s going,
Mother’s Day this year.
My response has been
“Good. I’m Good. Yes, I’m doing well.
Thanks for asking.”
Then a few minutes ago
she came up from down,
from, as she calls it, her “basement wing”.
“I meant to ask you mom, how are you doing today?   I mean, since it’s Mother’s Day and it’s the first one”.
“Good, I’m Good. Yes, I’m doing well.
Thanks for asking.”
I smiled sort of and then
shoot, if all of my resolve and healthy acceptance didn’t start to crumble. I was
determined though and made it through with only a few tears and we talked about it, how I’m doing,
a couple of sentences worth
and then
a hug and that was that.

Really, I could start listing right here and now, friends whose mothers and fathers are gone.
Friends who are orphans just like me.
Friends who struggled too, today.  My heart is no more sad than
maybe,
yours.
So this story isn’t about my first Mother’s Day without a mother, being bigger or worse or sadder or more reminiscent or more lonely or more nostalgic
than
yours.
It’s about me letting you in.  It’s about us sharing a moment together
here.
We know,
you and me,
how it feels to say good bye for the last time, to the one who took the best care
of us.  We know how it feels to need to talk to her.  She brought us along, under her wing and maybe didn’t consider herself a teacher but she was that.  We watched and a lot of what we do now is because of what she did then.  The non teaching we do or have done with our own girls and boys, we do or have done because she did the same.
I’ve told you before that I would not wish her back. No way on Earth. She is worshiping Jesus and enjoying her new home in Glory.   You better believe I believe it and I’m happy she’s there.
I just miss her.
I mean, 94 years is a long time to live on this Earth and considering she was born in 1921, I am amazed at all the changes and adjustments and good and bad times she lived through. She learned to be strong and maybe at the beginning she wasn’t, but after moving from here to there and then over yonder and from there, beyond, she learned to adapt and adjust and grow and learn and I learned good things watching her.
I would just like to talk to her sometimes.
Today, I would like to talk to her.
All three of my little ones wished me a Happy Mother’s Day and even my newest girl, my son’s wife, sent me a text on her way to see her own mama, to tell me thank you for raising “the best boy in the whole world” (I realize some of you, friends, might disagree with that part, since of course your own boy is the best boy in the World) and tell me she loves me. I got hugs from the other two and even got to sit in church with those two and
I can tell you and I am pretty sure you will agree
that I didn’t need flowers, or brunch, or presents. To see their faces and hear their voices was all.  Just. All.
Thirty two years ago, on the second Sunday of May, I was at church. The very church I was at today and people were giving me pathetic, sympathetic looks and saying
“Oh my dear, are you still here”? My first born was slow in arriving, or so I thought. I officially became a mother just about two weeks later.
Thirty years ago, on the second Sunday of May, I had an almost two year old and a one month old and I loved those two boys.
Twenty eight years ago, on the second Sunday in May, I had an almost four year old, a just turned two year old, my father had just been buried, my mother, three thousand miles away, was mourning the loss of her dearest one of all and I was waiting, once again, for another Staley babe. This one arrived, just as her brother had done four years earlier, approximately two weeks after Mother’s day and I loved those three little people.
As an aside, someone suggested that perhaps my husband and I should live in different provinces for the duration of the month of August.   Agreed!

And here we are and I’m the mother around this place and you and I know there isn’t a harder job on the planet and there are so many days when having three very little ones in one house is three too many and they all need caring for and they cry and we cry and they laugh and we laugh and we cook and we clean and we sing and we rub backs at bed time and we go for walks and wipe noses and put bandaids on scraped knees and kiss elbows that have landed on the pavement and we change diapers and wipe up spills and we won’t talk about vomit, not here,now, and they stamp their feet and we sit them in time out and some of us even spanked little bottoms and we gave hugs and received hugs and bathed and fought over what they were going to wear and not going to wear and reviewed spelling lists on the way to school and listened to their memory verses or poetry or speeches and we were frustrated when they didn’t listen and we spoke sternly when they fought and they argued and they said mean things and we prayed with them and took them to church and brought them home from church and some of us even took them to McDonalds more than every once in a while and we forgot sometimes that being a mother meant that we were also the tooth fairy and there were more tears and we were sad when they were sad and we are still sad when they are sad even though they are all grown up and we still pray with them because they need us to do it and we still pray for them when we aren’t with them because they need us to do it and it’s such a huge responsibility to be a mother and when they are little we don’t think so much about the responsibility of it and we just want to survive and do the best we can and we want them to survive and be the best they can be and
sometimes there just wasn’t time to eat and then we ate the leftovers on their plates because it was good food and why would we throw it away and we wonder if they have any idea
really
how much
we Love them.
But really
it’s okay if they don’t because we do.
We know how much we love them and we know how thankful we are that we get to love them and even though they hurt us sometimes we still love them
more than.

My mom, Nano, loved me. She loved us. She’s gone now and I would love to hear her voice again just like you would love to hear the voice of your mom.  For as long as God lets me remember things, I will remember her and I’m going to try to remember to thank Him for giving me to her and her to me for a while, a long while. And when I finish thanking God, the creator of everything there is, for a loving mother, I’m going to remember to thank Him for these three, the little ones who aren’t little at all any more, but whose mother I get to be.