Today I woke up missing my mother more than usual. There were so many things we hadn’t talked about when she had been alive. Things we probably should have talked about. I had, however, made sure that she hadn’t blamed herself for my foolish mistakes of the past. That is the thing with mistakes. I think Billy Joel said it best. They are truly the only things that we can call our own. Isn’t that the truth?
My relationship with my daughter is pretty good. At least I think it is. We can talk about many things. Even though there are plenty of those occasions when she rolls her eyes when I am getting too personal. “Hey, I’m your mother. It gives me the right to be a royal pain in your butt. I tell you these things, why?”
“Because you love me.” By now, her eyes are still rolling but there is the hint of a smile. As long as she knows that is why I am being so persistent. It is important to me that she knows.
I am not going to be around forever. I need to know that she, as well as my boys, can take care of themselves. Only then, will my job as a mother be complete. My boys have taken on the hard-headed mentality. That’s all right. We’ve all been there. As long as they know that I love them and want the very best for them that life has to offer.
No one understands better than me that you can love someone and not be able to live with them. That was the type of relationship I shared with my mother. I could not live with her but that did not mean I didn’t love her. I found I had a better relationship with her when I didn’t live with her.
I always admired my mom; I thought she had to be one of the strongest women I had ever known. She had single-handedly raised three girls who had turned into some pretty successful women, if I do say so myself. My grandmother had lived with us as well but it had been my mom who ran the house. She raised us to be the best that we could be. And for the time that I had deviated from the plan, God had been watching over me. I thank God that I finally came to my senses, came back into the fold, and had been able to spend some time with my mom before she had unexpectedly passed away three years later.
There are some things I don’t understand. Some things I may never understand. And that’s quite all right. I’m still standing here, unwavering, standing on the promises of God. I’ve come to accept that God’s plan for my life is so much better than anything I can ever hope to achieve. So I wait and I pray to God with an unconditional love that only one mother to another can ever understand.
