I ask that your bear with me as I share some thoughts about my mother... my body and soul is quite often weary and weak because of health issues... This last week has brought with it some mothering difficulties I could not have imagined... but I was was thinking about my own momma tonight and reading about last year right after I had just attended my 90 year old mother's funeral where some of her life successes were celebrated... I wrote the following in my journal:
I remember right this minute that I DEEPLY want to be worthy today of an eternal family AND I deeply WANT to endure to the end tomorrow...
Partly, I remembered because of the things that 2 of my mother's g-daughters mentioned in their brief remarks that momma taught them about unconditional love, determination and forever families... Partly, I remembered this because of the choice of music she requested... one of the special musical numbers was "Because I Have Been Given Much". At the cemetery she requested we sing, "As I Have Loved You". It was her last chance to tell us to be good to each other... and love each other... this was a life long effort for her... even now she simply asks us to love & nurture, as she did, without guile, without expectations.
Right now, at this very minute in my life, because of the reminders of the last few days... many of the temptations I personally struggle with, and many of my fears and challenges I have in MY life, are VERY far from my heart... That is because I want to be with my mother again... with a desire I cannot even express in words. I have a renewed strength to do better. I know I won't get to perfection in this life no matter how long I live... momma didn't either... but she never stopped trying, of THAT I am sure! That is one legacy she left her family. We accept her weaknesses as she did ours, but she never stopped trying to do better, and encouraging it in us.
I miss her so much, and she has not even been gone very long... I KNOW, that if I don't return to be with my Heavenly Father/Mother, if I cannot be reunited with daddy & momma, and have hubby and our children as part of our eternities... well... it won't be Heaven or happiness of any kind, for me... it will be hell... THAT will be be the worst community I could imagine... for the ETERNITIES! NO temporary gratification will be worth giving up them... Every missing member of our family will be felt by me... and while I know that I can't get them there... I can get me there, which is what my mother taught me.
Because I have faith... a tiny mustard seed-sized, kernal of faith, planted and nurtured through my mother's example... that the Savior can and WILL do all that He says He will do, I will keep trying... Because it is too important to give up on. I refuse to let the adversary win this one moment, this one hour, this one day. I can do it, minute by minute! I can resist, and I can win the fight... because it is the thing I WANT to do, not because it is something I have to do.
I am truly blessed with the family I was born into... I am also blessed with the family that I now associate with. My children are not actively rebellious, but that seems wildly unfair because momma who was never rebellious had several children that were... me included. Some of my siblings have faced a lifetime of challenges that momma warned us away from... While we are all okay people today and close as a family we are far from all doing what she taught with her own life example. Some of us even actively defy the nature of the things that mom had great faith in... And yet she never lost hope or stopped praying for each of us. She loves each without them being perfect. She was able to grasp a secret, which I believe is that love does not have to be perfectly given and received, it only has to be given as best as you can, and then you let go of it. Don’t keep trying to pull it back. Give it away and let it work in the life of those around you. The Savior can make something of your love that you can’t. But that approach definitely takes great faith.
She once told me that her prayers got longer and longer with each new g-baby, gg-baby... she prayed for each child that she was connected to, until she forgot us all. She seemed to know each struggle... perhaps not the details, but in general, she sensed the ones that were struggling... and she was guided by the spirit to pray for them, to try and love them more, and she did so without guilt as a motivator. I don't remember her ever saying anything to me like (and I certainly gave her times when it would have been earned), "you have disappointed me so deeply that I... (fill in the blank)." So yes, I am aware that she was a treasure... But that isn’t the reason that I write what I did. She is a mother to envy… I know. But she is not alone. Each of us can be the same kind of mother; in fact what my mother would have pointed out is that many probably are.
My mother thought of herself as pretty “un-amazing”. She recognized each of her personal weaknesses, but they weren’t the kind that others of her time struggled with, they weren’t blatantly obvious, but she knew she had them, and she didn’t try to hide them from us. She came from a simpler time, when childhood disease and cancer were killers, but where faith and trust in the Savior was a stronger commodity. She knew she wasn’t perfect, but she didn’t dwell on her failures, she tried to learn and move on.
She was married during the deepest part of the “great depression”, and she once said, that perhaps the depression was easier than a recession because no one had any money. She came from a generation of women that went to work to support families and the country, because fathers and sons went off to war (WWII), and a LOT of them didn't come back. She had many sisters/friends who became war widows, and many in her close family/community were lost to that war. She had two small babies under two when Pearl Harbor was attacked. She raised a family of 8 children on pennies and scraps, because my parent never had much, they spent their years, getting by. She had to work just to make ends meet, I remember when she took in washing and ironing, children from other families and then when her youngest children were small worked to support missionaries, by nursing. She continued to do that for many many years, first at a State Hospital in ID.
One of the extraordinary things about her is that she chose to wake up happy. She once told me that it was not because her life had ever been easy, or because waking up happy came easy to her, but because she wanted to do better tomorrow than she did the day before. She learned through death and at times local destruction in her family and community that earthly things fade and are not permanent... but that life is precious in its eternal and familiar nature. She wasn’t extraordinary because she did extraordinary things; she was extraordinary because she kept fighting to win the battle against discouragement and fear, (the adversary’s favorite weapons). She did it in the face of loss and grief. She was extraordinary because she never stopped trying to love and bless those around her, even when they rejected her efforts. She never “gave up” on her faith while bed ridden at the end of her life for several years and unable to remember who she was. She could still testify of eternal things and she was pleasant and kind to those caring for her, who she didn’t know were her own daughters. I surely should take a page from that chapter of her story.
My mother didn’t write any books, pass any laws, travel the world saving the planet or even raise any famous or particularly amazing children. She was a woman that slogged through 90 years of want and hardship without giving up. She was a woman that kept praying for relief, though it didn’t come in this life. She was EXTRORDINARY because of THAT, and I suspect that you reading this are too! I received a strong witness at her funeral the Heavenly Father accepted my mother’s efforts in this life, just as He very often accepts yours and my best efforts...
Oh how I miss her right now more than a year later... I miss her loving arms... I miss her wisdom... which I feel devoid of at times... I miss her smile, her laughter, and I miss the smell of her skin as I was allowed be cradled to her shoulder to cry out many of life's heartaches in her arms... I MISS her... ~ PA
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