My mom died last Friday. She was 83, and had suffered from dementia for the past several years. The past two-three years were especially rough, and I had been experiencing bouts of grief with increasing frequency over the past year or so. The disease made any reciprocal relationship impossible. I couldn't call her, or talk to her about becoming a mom myself, or even know if she knew me. I'm glad that she didn't linger, but I miss her, especially the her before dementia stole her away.
My own children were just getting the idea of "Grandpa and Grandma", and now won't ever experience Grandma. I want them to have a record of who their grandmother was, once upon a time.
She was a mom who baked cookies with us, letting us spoon out the dough and put the cookies in the oven with her, and then eat the warm ones. She make special butter "cut-out" cookies at Christmas time and let us eat the dough, and I continue this tradition with my children. She decorated the house for the holidays, especially Christmas, and was a generous gift-giver. She let us have lunch picnics outside in the yard on hot summer days.
She read to us, often, and gave us so many words--a Weekly Reader book-of-the-month subscription, Highlights magazines, Cricket magazine. She took us to the library for story hour and carted home piles of books each week. She recited poems to us, especially "Little Orphan Annie" (we thought it was scary) and wrote down at least one story that my four-year-old imagination conceived.
My mom took us places. We went to the St. Louis Zoo, to the Science Center (it was the Planetarium back then, I think), to the St. Louis Art Museum, to the transportation museum. We took hikes at Rockwoods Reservation and Shaw's Arboretum. She even let us go to Six Flags a time or two, and braved "downtown" so we could attend Cardinals baseball games with the free tickets we got for good grades.
She came to our school events (band, Scholar Quiz, a play or two). She worked part-time from the time I was in kindergarten, but always tried to come to activities.
She took us to church every week, including children's choir and youth group, providing a foundation of biblical knowledge and community that I am grateful for today.
She sewed and crocheted and knitted and cross-stitched. I had homemade Easter outfits and Barbie clothes. She hemmed my pants. I have pictures she cross-stitched on my walls. She tried to teach me to sew. I was thirteen. I never learned. I wish I would have.
My mom was a cutthroat Monopoly player. There was no "letting them win" at our house. Nope. If you landed on her property, you paid up or lost. She was a card shark and often won our many family Rook games because she could remember which cards had already been played.
These memories are the highlights. Like any person, like myself, my mom was flawed. Mothers and daughters, especially, can have their difficult moments. It can be easy, particularly when many of the good things are lost in the past, to only remember what was painful or damaging or sad.
In thinking about my mom and my own parenting, God recently reminded me that most of us are doing our best, trying to raise our children well. Just as I would never intentionally hurt my children (yet, as a fallible person, I will and probably already have), she would not intentionally have hurt me. It helped me to give more grace and to decide to try and recall all of the many wonderful times, instead of the things that I wished were different.
This mom, my mom, who baked and played games and decorated and gave us words and experiences and time--I want to be like her in these gifts, and to give those same gifts to her grandchildren.
