Happy Ninety-Fifth Birthday Mom – 2013

   

It has been ten years since my mother passed away on March 3, 2003. On January 29, 2013 she would have been age ninety-five, incredibly nearly a century old.  I miss her as much now as ever. It is not that I would wish her to be here and sick or not able to remember me, but I miss her just the same.

This picture shows mom at age seventeen, a teenage mother with her newborn daughter (me).  Many rough things were ahead for these two, but on this happy day no one could predict what those things would be.  The tie that remains in force forever was already tied, and nothing can easily break it.  It is a blessing God has given to us, and I am so thankful for it.

I often wonder what that invisible tie is.  It is real and yet unknown.  It means I can never go home again.  Wherever my mother was, felt like home to me.  As an old woman myself, when I went to visit and stay a few days with my mother, I was a child again. That safe, comfortable, familiar feeling, that all was well.  Or if not so well at the moment, it would be soon.  You can’t design a thing like that, and you can’t buy a thing like that, it happens from a deep love of a mother for her child. 

I was so fortunate to have a gracious mother.  She worked hard at making people feel comfortable and she did it so easily they weren’t even aware of it.  They just felt it and remembered it.

Yes, ten years ago was the last time I saw my mother.  I went to Gering, Nebraska to be with her on her eighty-fifth birthday.  We had a good time just doing simple things that both like to do.  We did nothing exciting, dramatic or expensive, just a nice time.  We enjoyed going to lunch and visiting.  We enjoyed going shopping with no deadline to get home.

My last glimpse of my mom was as I was leaving their driveway, and I looked back at the corner of the house where she always stood to wave goodbye.  Yes, there she was as usual, not turning to go back in until I was out of sight.  It was that last mortal tie for us.  That long and deep thread that began oh so many years ago as a teenage mother held her newborn daughter. Happy birthday mom and thank you.  

RILYA, Patty