For you, Mom…

I have this memory.

When I was a little kid, there was a Christmas market in our rural hometown. My parents gave me and my siblings some money to spend on Christmas gifts. Making my way through the vendor booths, I found myself staring at a luminous, cheap, fake diamond ring. It was little more than costume jewelry, but I bought it for my mom. When she opened it on Christmas day, I said to her, “It’s a diamond ring, mom.” She put it on, acting as if I had given her a priceless treasure. She may still have that ring in her jewelry box.

This semester I’ve been hiking the Thames Path. The many hours I’ve spent on the Path have created opportunities for me to think about a lot of things. As I moved toward the conclusion of my ramble, I found more of my attention drawn to my mother. “Mother” isn’t a natural word for me to use; for Thad, Steph, and I, she was always “mom.” That word, “mom” seems so informal. It captures the intimacy of the relationship mom always sought with us, her kids. To be close to us was her delight. Growing up, we didn’t crave that intimacy the way that mom did. That was our loss. Walking the Thames, I’ve dwelled amid cherished memories of my mom. I’ve also grieved because I know that today my mom is dealing with a physical disease that is as yet unexplained, a malady that is robbing her of her independence and afflicting her with chronic, irremediable pain. It is a hard thing, thinking about death, and yet this is where we are, talking about hospice while holding on to hope that there is some diagnosis that can provide an answer, some remedy that can restore what mom has lost.

One of my favorite novels of the last few years is John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. The novel tells the story of two teenage cancer survivors, Hazel and Augustus, who fall in love while coping with the ravages of the disease that will eventually end their lives. My favorite moment comes near the end of the novel when Hazel, Augustus, and their cancer-surviving friend Isaac gather together in the basement of the church that hosts their weekly support group. Augustus’s cancer has returned. He is going to die. There in the church the three friends gather a final time for Hazel and Isaac to deliver their eulogies for Augustus. There Augustus receives the good words of Hazel, the love of his life, and Isaac, his best friend.

Eulogies are not normally words delivered to one who is dying. Eulogies are made up of words for the living. A eulogy is meant to help us feel better about our own lives in the face of our loss. But why must it be this way? If we have good words to say to the dying, why not say these words to them? Why can a eulogy not be given to and for the sake of the loved one we are afraid to lose? Mom, this is what I’ve been thinking about these last couple months on the Thames Path. I’ve been thinking about you, about the words that I want to say to you while you can still hear them. I’ve been thinking about your eulogy.

It may seem a cliché when I say that my mom was the best that my siblings and I could ever hope for, but there it is. Not a day went by when we felt anything less than love from her. She created a home that was safe for us to grow and experience care, delivered mostly by her. Caring for young kids is a mundane thing. There is nothing glamorous about sorting laundry, vacuuming the house, cooking meals, bathing kids, and reading simple children’s books before bed. This is what mom did every day when we were young. My earliest memories are of her cleaning, usually with a music album playing on the family stereo while she sang along. Karen Carpenter and Olivia Newton-John were two of her favorites. I can’t listen to a Carpenters song without hearing my mom’s voice in my head. I’ve got an entire playlist devoted to 70s pop music ballads, my “mom” playlist. Mom could never stop singing; she filled our home with her voice, a crystal-clear soprano that could have taken her places were she not spending all of her time cooking, cleaning, and caring for us. If mom ever felt that being at home was a personal sacrifice on her part, she never complained. She made us feel that we were the center of her life.

As we got older and needed less of her attention, mom went back to school in order to become an elementary school teacher. For thirty years she taught third-grade students at Clarion-Limestone Elementary School, an entire generation of students whose lives were enriched by the care that mom gave them. I know how lucky her students were. Visiting her classroom, I was always astounded by the sheer amount of stuff happening there: bulletin boards covered with student art work, a class library filled with must-read chapter books for young readers, history projects with students that would be featured in the local newspaper. She spent weeks before the school year even began preparing a classroom that would provide her third grade students with educational adventure. She spent hours every week grading student work, dreaming up new activities to try with her school kids. Mom was an amazing teacher—energetic, creative, and always aiming to see the best in her students. She was the kind of teacher I aspire to be every day in my college classroom.

When we got older mom cared for me and my siblings by shuttling us to and from all of the sports, music, and after school activities that we were part of. Mom encouraged me, Thad, and Steph to pursue our passions. She took pride in every accomplishment we achieved. Choir, orchestra, and band concerts, musical theater performances, every sporting event that one of us was in, mom was there. Indeed, as we all got older it really seemed that mom lived vicariously through us. We didn’t always appreciate how much mom herself drew from our lives. There were days when mom’s love was almost stifling. Sometimes love manifests itself in worry, and mom worried a lot about my brother, sister, and me. She worried about our happiness, our futures, our choices, our health, our relationships. How many sleepless nights did mom spend worrying about us? How many times did mom intervene with advice, or words of encouragement, or a financial gift—anything to relieve her worry and make things just a bit easier for us? Is it possible to love too much? It was something mom struggled with. I know this, because I am too much like her. Just ask my kids.

The last few years have been a terrible journey of pain, suffering, uncertainty, and loss for all of us. I have struggled to find the right words to say as I watch mom become so dependent on the care of others. What can you say? Mom always hated cursing, but she was also quick to forgive, so she’d no doubt forgive us for all the curses we’ve uttered as of late amid our grief. When we are born, we are utterly dependent on the care of others. When we get old we become dependent once again. It’s a truth that we all know, and yet this knowledge makes it no easier to embrace the reality of it all as you watch the physical decline of a person you love whom you remember being so fiercely independent.  

So mom, this is what I want to say to you. It’s what I’ve been thinking the last half of my ramble. I want you to know how grateful I am to you for your seventy years of sacrifice, your fierce love, the way you provided a safe place for us to grow, flourish, and become the people that we are. We hope for better days ahead, but regardless of what comes I want you to know that we’ll be walking alongside you and dad into whatever the future holds. You and dad will not be alone. I haven’t a lot to give you that will take away your pain, but then you have always been one able to take the cheap gifts that we offer—cheap costume jewelry comes to mind—and receive them for the priceless treasures we hope that they will be.

There is this line in the novel The Fault in Our Stars that makes me weep every time I read it. It is a line from the end of a eulogy that Isaac, a blind teenage cancer survivor, delivers to Augustus, his best friend who is dying of cancer. I’ve adapted the words to make them my own. These words are for you, Mom…

“When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without her.”