Mother's Day will be a little sadder this year for me and my wife. It will be our first Mother's Day without either of our moms around.
We had them with us for a long time. Both lived into their nineties. But my mom died last spring and Dean's mom died this past March. So this year, for the first time, there are no gifts to buy, no cards to send, no phone calls to make.
Hopefully our children will remember to honor their mother. It does my heart good to see our sons let their mom know how much they love her, and how much they remember all the little things she did for them when they were growing up.
Many years must pass before most of us begin to realize what sacrifices our mothers made for us. When we are children, our judgment is impaired by our own self-centeredness. We often take Mom's hard work for granted. We are so focused on our own wants and desires that we fail to recognize the many ways Mom has put her own needs aside in order to meet our needs.
When we compare notes, it is amazing how many of us had mothers who preferred necks, backs, and chicken wings instead of the breasts and thighs. In fact, some of us are 30 or 40 years old before it dawns on us why Mom always chose a neck or a wing. It was just another way she found to deny herself so that her children could have the best.
Mother's Day is a good day for families to get together and remember fun times. Nowadays when our sons are with us, they laugh a lot recalling some of the brilliant things they did when they were young, and the dumb things their parents did. They remind us of all the times when they "fooled us" so that we did not have a clue what trouble they were getting into.
The late humorist, Erma Bombeck, understood the tough job that mothers have. She said, "I always knew that raising kids, if you did it right, might impair you from living a normal life. My tongue was nearly severed by an eight-month-old baby who positioned himself under my chin and then stood up."
It was Bombeck who could leave us in stitches describing the life of a mother. "Motherhood," she said, "is definitely not a job for sissies. You must have courage to enter a car with a teenage driver who released the hood on the expressway, thinking he's turning on the lights. You must have stamina to drag a preschooler on your leg for two blocks while he is dragging a bubble-gum machine behind him." Erma insisted that mothers must have the firmness to say, "Do not force those keys up Mommy's nose or Mommy will pass out."
Bombeck told about one mother who was numb as she checked herself into a hospital. Asked the cause of her dizziness, she replied, "I was hit by a truck." She simply did not have the heart to tell the admissions nurse that it was a toy dump truck that her son dropped on her head from his bunk bed. She told us about another mom who had not seen her son's bedroom for more than a year. Then one day when she dared to enter the room, she opened the door, looked in, and lost the sight in her good eye!
Perhaps these funny stories, and those of your own family, can give us a few good laughs on a day when many of us will experience some sadness. But if we try, we can spend some time reminiscing and laughing as we recall a few of our choice memories. Perhaps the most important thing we can do is to remember, and give thanks, for the many sacrifices our mothers made for us simply because they loved us.
Most of us will have to admit, we were blessed by the Mom God gave us, and we owe her a debt we can never repay.