A Mother's Gifts

 

     2009

 

Is there anyone in our lives who deserves to be revered more than our mother?

 

 

 

I am so glad I phoned home to Wisconsin on Saturday, January 17th.

    It had been a few weeks since my last call and conversation with Mom. During that time there had been a nagging thought, persistent in reminding me that I was overdue in giving Mom a call. So on impulse that day I took a moment, picked up the phone, and entered Mom’s number. I’ll be forever thankful that I did.

    Our conversation turned out to be the last one.

    Three days later, on Tuesday, January 20th, after a three-and-a-half-year battle with multiple myeloma, and after well outlasting the prognosis Mom had initially been given when diagnosed, that she had perhaps a year, maybe two, and having decided some months earlier to minimize further treatment, electing instead to let Nature take its course, Mom peacefully experienced the end she had been bravely facing for many months, and which she had come not to fear, rather for which she had told us she was ready, and in fact, welcomed. 

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   This is the first Christmas without Mother.

    But on Christmas morning, when it’s time to open the presents, and, bleary-eyed from Christmas Eve and Midnight Mass and the extra late bedtime which unavoidably results, and when sleeping in becomes an appealing option which inevitably gives way to the impatient promptings of those already up, and when groggily descending the stairs to join the clamor and, disheveled and hungry, taking one’s place on the couch and surveying the scene—lighted tree sparkling, colorfully wrapped gifts being handed out, and familiar faces in attendance—it can be observed that yet under the tree are three gifts remaining.

    They are from Mother. 

    They are there every Christmas—and have been, for all the Christmases I can remember.

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           Part 2.

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