For some of us who lost our moms too young, mother's day is a lot more predictable than Forrest Gump's carton of candy. If life is like a box of chocolates, we know what our flavor will be: bittersweet. All around us are reminders of ways to show maternal gratitude, but we have no one left to thank. Losing your mother at any age leaves a permanent scar on the heart. When fate deals you a motherless hand too early in the game, it creates a maternal hunger which can never quite be sated.
This year heralds two decades since my mom died. She had a debilitating stroke 20 years before that, when I was fourteen. And she had issues with her health for all the years prior, during my childhood. As grateful as I am for the care I received from my older siblings, I needed more of my mom. From my adult vantage point, as I reach back across decades to my young, pig-tailed self, I realize that I often had to fend for myself. I'm sure this was true as well for some of my siblings. I don't remember a time when I wasn't fiercely independent, with a stiff spine, and a "can do" attitude. I often wonder if that is just my personality or if it is a God-given resilience to survive? Perhaps it is both. I know I often wrestled mentally with accepting the harsh realities of my family's circumstances. Because of my father's premature death, and our mom's health issues, our life had the feeling of a headless horse: leaderless. I craved stability and normalcy. I understood at a young age, not to rock the boat because no one may even notice and how sad would that be?! I remember at fifteen, giving my stroke riddled mom pep talks, counting all the good reasons there were for her to live. I can't imagine how depressed she must have felt to be trapped inside a body that no longer followed her commands! She would cry and thank me with her garbled speech. It was a very odd reversal of roles, and took its toll on me emotionally.
I view my determined, independent nature as a coping method for surviving childhood hardships, for which I am grateful. However, as all the psychological studies detail, early childhood trauma leaves an indelible mark and helps mold the clay that hardens into the adult. The flip side of my coin is that I am most uncomfortable receiving help and acknowledging weakness. When you've had to "buck up" as a kid, and just figure out what to do, it doesn't make you the most empathetic person on the block. I am ashamed to admit this, but sometimes when I listen to someone talk about their struggles, my mental word bubbles are filled with judgement: "you have no idea what hardship is", or "at least you had a mom and a dad", or "someday you'll have real problems as opposed to this silliness". I know that at times, I have discredited my own children's struggles, thinking, "all you know is normal and wonderful". How unfair is that! Larry has the kindest heart of any person I know; I have learned about empathy through his example. At times he has reminded me that, "their paradigm is just different from yours. We all start from a different place and need grace."
My personal need to project competent, capable and well-managed, is so strong that I struggle to even admit that there is still a little girl inside of me longing for more of her mother. And more of her father. I have dealt with this in my life by attempting to accept what cannot be changed, and instead, focusing on the good things, on the blessings, of which there are many. While that may be a noble cause, it does not negate the fact that I still have childhood scars. I feel guilty saying that because God's grace has shone on me in ways beyond my wildest imaginations; and there are so many who have faced much more challenging childhoods than mine. However, honesty asks me to account for all the items in my own luggage.
In the past year, as I've allowed my thoughts to find their voice on paper, I've noted several recurring themes. One that is so obvious, I've never given it much audience, is "childhood loss". To my matter of fact way of thinking, that is like saying, "the sky is blue." It's such a constant that it is barely worth noting. The beauty of disciplining my thoughts to morph into actual words on a page, has been realizing how this azure hue has tinted everything in my view of the world. While I am not a fan of extended navel gazing, hopefully looking inward with understanding will help me see others with kinder eyes, realizing that to some extent, we are all wounded children.
My daddy was ahead of his time in many ways. The story goes that in the early 1960s, he went to Detroit, from our home in Ohio, and specified with a motor company, how to build the chassis for a customized, drivable, camper bus. He drove that shell back to Ohio, sitting on a 5 gallon bucket, and then supervised the construction of a motor home that slept eight. He took it out west to Wyoming with buddies and hunted deer and elk. And after his death, our family vacations usually consisted of that bus parked at a campground somewhere.
My brother, Lowell and I standing in the chassis of the bus.
My mom, cooking dinner over the fire, with the motor home in the background.
My dad was also ahead of the curve with home movies; with his 16mm film, he was pre, pre-iphone! We have some precious home movies, thanks to him. Some years ago, I had them converted from the round reels of film, to a CD, so they could be enjoyed more often. I was savoring an episode of "Gingerich Christmas Reunion, Virginia Beach, 1962". This was a gathering of most of my mom's twelve siblings, along with their kids, and our grandparents, which my dad filmed for a few minutes. The camera panned around the circle of the living room, with aunts and uncles smiling sheepishly for their moment of stardom. Young cousins wandered through the room, playing some sort of game. Uncle Simon raised a bare foot to the camera and threw back his head and laughed. Amidst all the mayhem, the camera kept returning to focus back in on two pajama-clad toddlers, in the middle of the room. Suddenly it hit me why the camera kept going back to two year old Lowell and ten month old Cindy: my daddy was behind the camera and we were his babies! I wept when I realized that I was viewing my little self through the eyes of my father. The loss of him has been a theme throughout my whole life.
While we live in this world, loss is something we all have to deal with, to varying degrees. Last month found Larry and I sitting in a funeral, along with other family members and friends, trying to wrap our minds around the death of 33 year old Ricky, my niece, Liz's husband and soulmate, and father of their four young children. I could barely raise my head to look at Liz, Grayson, Tony, and Weston, seated in the front row of the church, facing a casket. Watching that family and knowing the journey ahead of them, I felt like my heart would break. Suddenly it hit me: that is what people thought about our family, when my dad died! "Those poor kids. What will they ever do?!" I believe with all my heart, the Scriptural truth that promises God is a father to the fatherless and a husband to the widow. He will shepherd Liz and her kids in the wake of Ricky's death. My heart aches too, for my brother, Lowell; he knows firsthand what fatherless feels like, and now he sees his grandkids in those same shoes. Liz is an amazing, strong woman, who will show her kids by her example, what it looks like to journey along the dark, dark path of grief. Their family will be a trophy of the faithfulness of God. I want to hug those boys and say, "I know what it feels like to lose your daddy. Father's Day will be so hard, with no one to buy a card for."
Obviously, the day venerating the maternal parent is bittersweet for me, and churns up a myriad of emotions. Despite all she could not give me, my mother gave me the gift of life, literally. When she was pregnant with child number six, Lowell, the dr. diagnosed damaged heart valves, caused by untreated, childhood, rheumatic fever. The physician's advice was, "no more kids; you may not live through another pregnancy". Lowell and I are sixteen months apart in age. When they discovered she was pregnant with me, the dr. recommended a therapeutic abortion, to save her life. She declined, found another physician, and gave birth to me, despite the tole it took on her health. She never made me feel guilty for this; rather, from as young as I can remember, she instilled in me a sense of destiny. She would tell me, "God wants you here for a reason. He has a special plan for you." What a gift she gave me, her youngest child! Someday, in heaven, where there is no language to convey the concept of "loss", I will see her again and feel the warmth of her smile.
I uncovered this, recently, in an old box. It was a card I made for my mom, written on a kleenex.