The mothers & their love & sacrifice:
the ones who lead the quiet, loving lives
Yesterday I missed my mom. A lot.
I wanted to call her, was saddened to realize that I cannot.
It’s been 4 1/2 years, and that urge strikes a lot less than it used to. Not that I Don’t miss her but it is no longer a habit to call her, daily, as it once was.
But I missed her. I longed to dial her cell and have a simple conversation, hear her voice and tell her I loved her, and hear that she loved me. To hear her call me ‘Smell’ or “Smelly.”
Today, I also read on facebook that an acquaintance had just lost her mother. I opened up the posting and read her obit. In it, they captured their mother’s love and selflessness—that she never saw her own good qualities reflected in her children. Instead, she attributed them as blessings from God.
It reminded me of my own mother and how whenever I tried to thank her and credit my laurels (even in part) to her, she would refuse, having none of it.
Instead, she would say, “I think it was all you.”
Of course it wasn’t.
I have written before about it, and frequently marvel about the type of person and type of life I would have—how it would have been so different had I not had my mother. If, for example, she died from her heart attack when I was 12. Rather than sticking around for another 25 years.
But I thought about all of these quiet loving altruistic mothers that quietly move through life and invest all their love into their kiddos.
Their obits so often are simple and seem like they will frequently be easily forgotten beyond their kids or grandkids.
I say this without judgment.
I mean, my own dear mother’s was like that.
But I was reflecting today on how they are truly our unsung heroes, the ones that keep it all going.
They are so often the ones who have created the next generation, especially of daughters, learning to become women, and understanding how to survive and be kind in this often very unkind and lacking in empathy culture, this patriarchal, white-supremacist, capitalist world.
Someone once told me that my mother’s biggest accomplishment and legacy was me.
I think she would agree.
I don’t think I do.
But I am thankful for her. I have certainly benefited, been blessed by, and reaped those benefits.
But—I think that—it’s delicate, it’s complicated.
Here’s what I mean—
My mother believed that love and sacrifice for your kids was the way to live life. I think in many ways she was happier because she wasn’t so self-focused, but generous and altruistic.
And yet also, I find it so heartbreaking that she never (was able to really) live for herself because she was never taught to have that inner self esteem; she didn’t think herself worth it—
She didn’t know to exist alone:
Without a man.
Without children.
Or students to teach.
When she had no one left to serve and sacrifice for, she didn’t know what to do with herself.
I absorbed a lot of that and happily complied with co-dependency for a long time in my relationships and service to others.
It’s been part of my healing and un-learning.
I also reflect on how we—societally—assume this emotional and unpaid labor of maternal and feminine love, women who do this, give so readily and freely of themselves—
When society and culture doesn’t monetarily compensate them well (or at all) for their service to keeping the next generation going..
Especially now with stagnant salaries, price gouging among groceries, inflation, the exorbitant cost of daycare, etc, etc.
We need women, the mothers, to keep it all going—
Especially in this era of late stage capitalism.
We would truly crumble without them.
And I just want to make it known that they are the ones who keep it all working—
These unsung heroes, the ones who—when departed—their obits may not boast of medals or millions in charity work or lifetime achievement awards, but they are the foundations of our society, that keep us going.
These loving, selfless women and mothers.
We owe it all to them.
I will not have my own children, but I am glad, oh-so glad that I had my mother.
My selfless, altruistic, loving, generous, doting, mama.