Mother’s Day Post Mortem

For years I have prayed on Mother’s Day a prayer of thanksgiving for all mothers who have diligently carried out their important vocation. I also mentioned in almost the same breath our sympathy for those who have lost their moms. This year joined that “club”. I can’t say that it’s been an easy transition because I have had some very sad and difficult moments. I found a bit of comfort, if you want to call it that, in Christopher Buckley’s article in the April 26, 2009 Sunday Times Magazine called “Mum and Pup and Me”. He writes:

I think about them every day. Orphanhood proceeds (…). It comes in waves. One moment you’re doing fine, living your life, even perhaps feeling some sort of primal sense of liberation – I can stay out as late as I want, and I don’t have to make my bed! Then in the next instant, boom, there it is. It has various ways of presenting, as doctors say of disease. Sometimes it comes in the form of a black hole inside you, sucking the rest of you into it; at other times it is a sense of disconnection, as if you had been holding your mother’s hand in a crowd and suddenly she let go.

So, this year it happened to me; she let go.