Mother's Day

For the first few years after my Mom died I ignored Mother’s Day. Well I didn’t totally ignore it I guess. I knew better than to try and make plans with friends. I didn’t go out because I knew restaurants would be packed. I reasoned that Mother’s Day just wasn’t a day for me anymore. I managed to do that for five Mother’s Days in a row. Then I started going to church.

You need to understand that when I first started going to church I didn’t miss a single Sunday for a year and a half or something. I was baptized the weekend before Mother’s Day. It was a really exciting time in my faith walk. However it was that weekend I realized that the church would acknowledge Mother’s Day. For the first time I didn’t want to go to church. I dreaded it the whole week – even though I was freshly baptized.

Each year I ponder whether I am going to church or not. The general stand up if you are a Mom so we can applaud you makes me feel empty and like a loser. I am not a Mother, I don’t have a Mother, yet I am an adult woman. Even when that doesn’t happen I feel like I am ruining others Mother’s Day. It is a day to celebrate. It is a day we should celebrate. Some of my friends were already mothers when I met them. Some were not. For those who I have always known as being a mom that is part of what I love about that. For those I have watched make the transistion I have been blessed by seeing them transformed by having a child. I do my best to celebrate with them and encourage them. Yet for me it is a day of grieving what I have lost and what I don’t have.

This year I wish my Mom had been around to take care of me through the crisis of the surgery and the recovery afterwards. I wonder if it would have been a little less scary. I feel a hole in my heart where a mother’s comfort should be. In some ways I think that thinking about why I am missing my Mom right now honors her. I guess it is my part in Mother's Day.