I do not wish to romanticize a mother’s love. My mother’s love was a practical one, expressed less through grand declarations of affection than through the everyday business of raising children, providing for them, and praying over their lives.
It was always clear to me that she loved my late younger brother more than the rest of us. I have never had a problem with that. As I have grown older, I have come to believe that it is practically impossible to love two people in precisely the same way. We say that we do, but I have my doubts. I believe we can love two people equally, but not necessarily the same.
And I understood why my brother occupied such a special place in her heart. How could he not? He was among the kindest and most generous souls I have ever known. I loved him dearly myself. There was nothing in my mother’s affection for him that diminished my own place in her life, nor did I ever feel the need to compete for what she gave him so freely.
My mother is now of advanced age, and I find myself increasingly drawn to her. Perhaps it is the passage of time, or the growing awareness that the opportunities we have to be together are no longer limitless.
There is a certain irony in how much of her I have inherited. Diabetes, hypertension, and, more recently, glaucoma. Her ailments have become my ailments. But the inheritance goes beyond the physical.
My mother is a woman of strong opinions. So am I. We are both stubborn in our convictions, and perhaps that is why, to an outsider, we sometimes appear not to get along. But appearances can be deceiving. We understand each other remarkably well, perhaps better now than ever before.
As her memory begins to fade, I find myself recognizing more of her in me. The traits I inherited from her seem to grow more pronounced with age, as though time is slowly revealing just how much of who I am began with her.
My mother did the best she could for her children, and I am a full beneficiary of that love.
She fed us. She clothed us. She cared for us. And she prayed for us.
Those things may sound ordinary, but they are not small things. They are the substance of a mother’s devotion, the often-uncelebrated sacrifices upon which entire lives are built.
I do not take any of it for granted.
I believe her prayers have sustained me through more seasons of my life than I can count. They continue to sustain me, even now.
And perhaps that is what I have come to understand about my mother’s love. It did not always announce itself in ways the world might recognize. It did not need to. It was there in what she did, in what she endured, in what she gave, and in the prayers she offered for her children.
Perhaps it has taken the passage of years for me to appreciate fully the sacrifices my mother made and the depth of her devotion. As children, we see our parents largely through the lens of our own needs. We know what they give us, but seldom understand what it costs them to give it. Age has afforded me a different perspective. I now recognize the burdens she carried, the things she went without, and the quiet determination with which she raised her children. I see her not simply as my mother, but as a woman who had her own struggles, disappointments, hopes, and dreams, many of which she may have set aside for our sake. There is a tenderness in that realization, and perhaps a measure of regret that it has taken me so long to arrive at it. But above all, there is gratitude.
Now, as the years advance and her memory slowly retreats, I feel an increasing desire simply to be near her. Not to revisit old disagreements or settle any accounts, but to sit with her, to listen, and to be her son.
I should go and see her.
God sparing all our lives, I will.
Simply O.
