My Last Mother’s Day

The official Mother’s Day holiday, as is celebrated in the United States, originally came through the efforts of a woman name Anna Jarvis. She conceived of the holiday following her mother’s death in 1905, as a way of honoring the sacrifices mothers made for their children. In 1908 she organized a huge Mother’s Day celebration at her church, and four years later, established the Mother’s Day International Association, designed to help promote her efforts to make Mother’s Day a national observance.

It wasn’t until 1914 that President Woodrow Wilson signed a measure officially establishing the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

Anna Jarvis’ mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, died on May 9, 1905.

One hundred years later, Mother’s Day fell on May 8. I will always remember that specific date — Sunday, May 8, 2005. It was my last Mother’s Day!

When I moved from my hometown in South Carolina, to Nashville, TN for a job, Mother’s Day was not a weekend I was able to get back to SC to see my mom. But long before technology provided the ability to Skype or FaceTime, I would call my mom every year on that Sunday; without fail. Of course, for her, it was just another day, because I regularly spoke to my mom practically daily, from the first week I moved away. But I still made it a point to call on the day.

One of the reasons I never tried to make the almost 500 mile drive back home the second weekend of May was because I had instead made it a tradition of spending even more days there at the end of the month — over the long Memorial Day weekend. Even before I had worked at my new job long enough to accumulate any real vacation days to use, I made the most of our early one o’clock departure on Friday afternoons, knowing we didn’t have to be back to work until 9:30 that Tuesday morning. So a three-day weekend seemed a better use of my time and the 1000 plus miles I would put on my car trying to get there for Mother’s Day. As each year passed, I had more and more vacation days to stack on top of that 3-day weekend, until I reached the point of adding four to the week, giving me almost 10 days to enjoy more time with my family and friends. It became somewhat of a tradition that I spent at least a week back home in SC twice a year — Memorial Day for the summer, and of course, during the Christmas holidays.

But this Memorial weekend 2005 was going to be the first time I wasn’t 100 percent certain I would make it back for that holiday weekend. And I knew that even if I did, I wouldn’t have any extra days off since I would have only just returned from an almost two-week trip to Israel with my church. So I kept an eye on the airfare rates — knowing it would be brutal to try to drive that weekend, get back to TN, and then leave to go out of the country 36 hours later.

I found one just a week out and decided to surprise my mom. I’d been back to see her three times that spring — February, March, and April. That was not the norm. But 2005 was no normal year. My mom was admitted to the hospital the day after I’d been to town to visit her over President’s Day weekend. That visit came about after a troubling phone call the month before when for the first time every, my mom was really honest about how she was feeling. Struggling to get over the flu she came down with shortly after the holidays, she actually answered honestly one day on the phone. It took her weeks to battle it, and every day I called she sounded weaker and weaker.

“Hi mama. How are you feeling today.”

“Not good, Gloria. I’m not doing good,” she said with a soft, but clear voice.

Those words still ring in my ear, all these years later. Sometimes I hear them when I least expect it; doing nothing. In the past, mom had always pretended to be fine, even when she wasn’t. Like most moms, she never wanted us to worry. But that January, she was honest. And even though I’d just been home for Christmas, I knew I had to go back to see her.

None of us expected for her to be admitted to the hospital. And we certainly didn’t think she’d remain in there as long as she did. Every time I went back to see her, the news got worse and worse. The doctors didn’t sound like they were ever going to release her. I guess they knew something we didn’t; months before the rest of us.

I stopped by my parent’s house before heading to the hospital during one of my visits. In 2005, we didn’t have the benefit of smartphones, and my mom didn’t have a laptop, or even email for me to send anything to. So I grabbed a point and shoot camera, shot the whole roll of her house, with the blooming trees, greening grass, and purple, pink, and yellow flowers. It had been two months since she’d seen her house. I thought having the photos would help brighten her day; give her a reason to fight the infection that was taking over her body. I wanted her to want to be sitting on her front porch, watching the birds in her birdbaths, and enjoying the faint scents of the irises, azaleas, and roses that were in full bloom. I want her to fight to get out of that hospital and go back home. She’d never been in there for this long; not even when she had her kidney transplant.

But she never returned home. She was admitted a few days after President’s Day in February. She spent her March Anniversary, Easter in April, and now Mother’s Day in the hospital.

And yet I still left for Israel two days later. Why?

That month was my last Mother’s Day. And my body, my heart, my spirit still to this day grieves not just that time period. But my decisions leading in to it.

Anna Jarvis never married and was childless her whole life. I am still among the living; yet both of those issues are among the many other things I still grieve today.

But that is another story. For another time.

 

“Shout for joy, O barren one, you who have borne no child; Break forth into joyful shouting and cry aloud, you who have not travailed; For the sons of the desolate one will be more numerous Than the sons of the married woman,” says the LORD. “Enlarge the place of your tent; Stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, spare not; Lengthen your cords And strengthen your pegs. “For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left And your descendants will possess nations And will resettle the desolate cities. read more.
“Fear not, for you will not be put to shame; And do not feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced; But you will forget the shame of your youth, And the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. “For your husband is your Maker, Whose name is the LORD of hosts; And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, Who is called the God of all the earth.   Isaiah 54:1-5