Mother's Day, May 11,2014

On Mother’s Day each year I re-read the copy of a column I have kept by Erma Bombeck. I can’t keep the tears from surrounding my eyes as I read about why our children were taken from us and how this day, Mother’s Day, is the hardest day of the year for us.

To paraphrase, Bombeck says that mothers need to know why they were permitted to go through the elation of carrying a child and lose it to miscarriage, accidents, violence, disease or drugs. We want to protect our child, but we can’t always do so.

Surviving changes us. We look at life differently as we go through the grief journey. We may feel anger, guilt and despair at first, but time has a way of healing our souls. What was important to us at one time may no longer have any meaning.

In one of Bombeck’s books, I Want to Grow Hair. I Want to Grow Up. I Want to Go to Boise, she talked with mothers who had lost a child to cancer. Every one of them said death gave their lives new meaning and purpose. And who prepared them for the rough, lonely road they had to travel? Their dying children. They pointed their mothers toward the future and told them to keep going. The children had already accepted what their mothers were fighting to reject.

The children in Oklahoma City, in Columbine, and in Sandy Hook touched more lives than they will ever know. You can bet that after those events, parents came home and hugged their kids, that day and forever after. As Bombeck says, Mother’s Day is a day of appreciation and respect. “I can think of no mothers who deserve it more than those who had to give a child back.”

Maybe we are all here to perpetuate the life that was lost and appreciate what time we had with our children. It may be about taking each moment and making the best of it, without knowing what is going to happen next.

“Why me?” you may ask, but you won’t get an answer. The answer lies within each of us to do the best we can with the life we have left.

I hope you all find something special to do on this Mother’s Day with friends, relatives or even just going to the cemetery to be with your child for a short time. Do whatever helps you get through this day.