I Will Remember - UrbanMoms

It was a year ago today that I sat with my sister and held my mother’s hand as she died. I’ve been avoiding thinking about it for – oh, several months now, anyway – but the day brings it all back in full-force, as anniversaries have a way of doing. Because I’m too overwhelmed to put any really new and coherent thoughts down, I’m reprinting the eulogy I wrote and later delivered at my mom’s funeral. It’s an appropriate way, I think, to mark the anniversary of her death and a starting point from which to focus on remembering her remarkable life:

My sisters and I have always known that we were blessed with a remarkable mother, although it wasn’t until we became adults that we fully appreciated how privileged we were to have such happy, carefree childhoods. It is indeed a rare gift.

Growing up in our family we knew only unconditional love. We were nurtured with acceptance rather than suffering the sting of disapproval. We were encouraged to explore our individuality, to challenge boundaries, to soar carefree and confident into adulthood. And it was our mom, alongside our wonderful dad at the centre of it all, who was the beating heart of our happy family.

We turned to her constantly for advice, for support, for a consoling shoulder to cry on, an encouraging pat on the back, a comforting hug. She was our family’s magnetic north; the direction you’d always turn in when you were lost, a sure way home. And now that she’s gone, we are like a compass in a lightning storm – spinning, lost, searching for that familiar compelling force.

But our mother’s gifts to us didn’t end when her life did. What she gave us – her true gifts – live on within us, in our hearts and in our minds. When we feel the need for our Mom’s advice, all we really have to do is look within and ask ourselves, “what feels right? What would Mom do?” In fact, my Dad recently illustrated this for me very well. We were reminiscing about Mom, and I wondered aloud how Jennifer, Allyson and I were going to manage as motherless mothers (actually, I think my question was more specifically directed at how I would survive two teenage daughters without her to turn to for advice). And Dad said, “you know: when you girls would phone to speak to your mother, she would just listen and say, ‘yes…I know…I understand…’ She never told you anything you didn’t already know.” And he’s right. She was an excellent listener. She listened – patiently – and then gave us reassurance, and confidence that our instincts were right, but in fact we came up with the solutions, drawing from the lessons we learned at her knee.

So now I no longer worry so much about how I’ll manage without her. Instead, I look for her influence on me; I search for traces of Mom in myself. And I find her there – I hear her in my voice (and my sisters’ voices, too), and in a familiar turn of phrase; I see her in a gesture of my hand. But more importantly, I feel her in my values, my attitudes, my unconditional love and acceptance of my own daughters.

And I know that she hasn’t really gone, that she will always be within us.

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