Since my mother died in February 2011, with me by her side in a Charlotte, NC hospital, there are periods that are harder than others throughout the year. November, her birth month, and February can sometimes be rough.
Mother’s Day is a mixed bag, emotionally. After all, I can celebrate my wife as the mother of our daughter, and my mother-in-law as the mother of my wife, and all those women, living and dead, who have been like a mother to me over the year.
This May, I attended a production of The Music Man at a high school about an hour south of Albany. My wife’s niece, and therefore my niece, was in the production, as she has for the previous five years, going back to 6th grade. It was quite good.
If you go on Sunday matinee, after the performance, the director thanks various folks individually. Then she says goodbye to the seniors, which is difficult for her each year, as they literally leave their shoes on stage.
One of the seniors, the one who played the mayor’s wife, really bonded with the director. Each of them had lost their mothers, I don’t know when, but recently enough that the sentiment felt really raw.
And damned if seeing them mourning their mothers on stage kicked up similar feelings for me.
Then there was that woman who got partially sucked out of a Southwest Airlines plane and soon died. At least two of the news networks reported on her husband telling her parents of their daughter’s death. But then he had to figure out how to tell their two children that their mom was not coming home. I had no reaction… ah, who am I kidding?
So this Mother’s Day is a tad more melancholy for me, for these reasons, or maybe something else, or for no discernable cause at all. Of course, I know that even if your mom’s alive, one can dread the commemoration.