In Memory of My Mother
Edna Elnora Laker Cook (Oct, 3, 1896-Oct. 9, 1945)
Mother’s Gone
By Shirley Sealy
My mother was gone. The moment I had dreaded, been warned of, and lived in fear of, was here and she was gone. I looked down at my hands and they were lying still in my lap. Why wasn’t I shaking? Why wasn’t I screaming or going through a dramatic scene like the terrible ones of my dreams when I’d searched for mother and couldn’t find her? Then I’d wake in a cold sweat and call her on the phone and know she was still here. Not this time. This time she was really gone and I was wide-awake.
As I left my duplex apartment to go to my sister’s house, to be with what was left of the family in this hour of shock and sorrow, I knocked on my neighbors’ door to let her know I’d be gone. As I talked, aware of her shocked expression while answering sympathetic questions, my chin began to quiver. Just that. No more. My chin uncontrollably quivered as if I was cold . . . but I wasn’t cold.
It has been many years since the terrible accident that took my mother from me and I still marvel at the way we all stood it. Mother had taught us so well, taught us of a life to come, where we would all meet and be together again. She had gone on ahead, as usual, to show and prepare the way. Mother had always prepared the way, been an example of what to do, how to act and what to say. Mother had earned a rest and we all knew she had gone to the best place possible because that’s the way she lived, doing good always. We didn’t resent her leaving anymore than she would ever have let us resent being born.
Mother’s funeral was different than most funerals. I wanted to go. Until that time I’d always said I couldn’t stand funerals, that I wasn’t going to my own if I could get out of it. However my mother’s was different. The foolish girl inside that thought it was “big-time” to stay away suddenly grew up, becoming a woman, with the announcement of my mother’s death.
Mother was taken at the same time that I was expecting my second child at any moment. I couldn’t do the running around and our father was in the hospital as a result of the same accident, so my sisters’ made all the arrangements and I sent the telegrams.
“Accident late tonight” . . . stop . . . “Mother killed” . . . stop . . . “Father in the hospital" . . . stop.
The words went round and round in my head like a broken record, snuffing out sleep, tearing at my overtired, numbed mind. I needed rest. I wanted to sleep so that I could attend mother’s funeral. As I tossed in my bed, suddenly a calm came over me. It was the same calm that I’d always felt when mother sat beside me and we talked. It was as if she was there beside me now, on the bed, and I fell into a deep, quiet sleep that I didn’t wake from until the morning sun fell on my face.
I felt the calm feeling again at the funeral when we stood beside her casket for the last time. We didn’t cry. It would have been selfish to cry, I felt. I remember the feeling there, as if her spirit was with all of us, busily doing things for others as she’d always done. We plucked flower after flower from the bouquet that covered her casket and we gave them to all those who wanted one to remember mother by. We were reluctant to leave that sacred spot, not because it was sacred, but because we felt her closeness with us there.
Mother’s teachings were so consistent. I know today, this very minute, what she would say if I asked her advise on any subject. She’d listen to me, weigh both sides, comment on each, express the good and the bad, and then leave it to me to make up my mind, knowing I would make the right decision. She had a way of pointing out truth that couldn’t be ignored and she always had faith in our ability to follow right. All of her children still live by that rule, remembering mother’s faith in us. And even now, I can see her smile, hear her voice in my ears, and remember what her gentle touch on my face or arm was like, even though she has been gone for many years.
Mother had a way of making each of us, all seven of us, her children, feel special. We were “heaven-sent gifts to brighten her life,” she used to say over and over and we believed her because she made us feel that way.
We had little of the comforts of life that money could buy. Mother dressed herself and all of us on a budget most people wouldn’t believe. We had little more food than the fruit she bottled in the summer, the milk our one cow gave and the vegetables she planted and took care of in our garden each summer. Father worked away a lot. It was a time when building was scarce and my father was a carpenter and had to go where he could get work, first at one end of the valley and then the other. Yet, I never heard about the sacrifices of motherhood from our mother. I only remember how often she told me what a blessing her children were. I felt loved all my life and I know my brothers and sisters were equally loved. I wonder how she made me know that?
I remember when we had company. Sometimes relatives from out of town came to stay, or friends from the surrounding towns. When they stayed overnight we would double up on the floor, but always mother made us feel good about it. Like when she fixed dinner for company. Sometimes there wasn’t enough food for everyone so she’d ask us to be good and not say anything and after the company was gone she’d fix us something together in the kitchen with her. She ate with us and always made us feel so good that we didn’t miss what we didn’t get.
I remember times of illness, waking feverish and full of pain, to see my mother sitting beside my bed, her cool hand on my hot head as I tried to sleep. I remember sweat baths and mustard plasters, and sponge baths and clean sheets. Mother was a good nurse, had a natural touch and a divine sense of what to do in case of illness. When the fever was gone and I was still bedridden, she’d tell me stories and give readings for me. She sometimes gave her comic and serious readings in public gatherings, but when I was ill she’d do them just for me.
Mother liked to laugh. Always busy, she had only a little time for fun, but she had a way of making everything seem fun. She loved movies and especially the musicals that Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald did together. We saw the movie musical “Rose Marie” one afternoon and I remember my little sister telling Daddy she saw the man fall off the barrel three times. When the acting, the story, and the music were good, mother could watch a movie over and over!
I remember the way mother sewed. She could take an old coat or heavy dress, rip it apart, wash, press and turn it inside out, cutting a new dress from the pieces that was a modern creation of the latest style.
Mother had a way of talking, of letting me talk, of listening to my friends and making them feel welcome. My friends all loved to come to our place because mother made them feel welcome. Mother was our friend.
I believed in my mother long before I understood about God. Gradually, as I grew older, I transferred that faith in mother to a belief in God, my Father in Heaven. I can’t remember when I made the change. To me, mother and Father in Heaven were synonymous. I was quite grown up before I realized my mother was really very human and that she sometimes could make mistakes, even though she’d always told me that she did.
I liked the human side of mother too. I liked the way she frowned a little when an off-color joke was told or crude language was used, the way she fell asleep when I combed her hair, the way she smiled when she looked into the faces of her children, and the way she screamed when she saw a snake.
Mother was my cushion against the world. I could tell her more than I told any girlfriend. I could depend on her keeping my confidence, listening without judging, and punishing me when I needed it. Usually her look of disapproval was more punishment than when she deprived me of things that would help me learn.
Mother encouraged me in everything good and told me story examples of everything wrong. I was always proud of her. She always looked nice, though she worked as hard as any man, and she had to stretch a dollar a dozen ways.
We often had troubles at home, the same fights and differences all siblings have, but I don’t remember them because mother helped us work them out. We were usually sent to separate rooms to play alone until we could kiss and make up, then we’d talk the problems out and the hurts didn’t stay.
When I look into the faces of my five children I find it hard to believe they didn’t know my mother . . . the mother that has influenced their lives so much. She is still so much a part of my life that it seems only natural that my children would know her too.
Many years have passed and I’m still trying to be the kind of mother to my children that my mother was to me, not perfect, but fulfilling. I try to teach and encourage them, love them as she loved me. She showed me the way and I hope I’ve showed them the way and that they’ve showed their children.
Sometime I think of all the things I’ve missed that we might have shared together all these years that my mother has been gone, but those things are overshadowed by the knowledge of all the things I am and hope to become because of the goodness of her life.
One more thing . . . Mother, I’m remembering how we used to laugh together when people talked about the sacrifices of motherhood because you taught me that motherhood is the “best,” the top, evidence of the Lord’s love for women because His plan allowed us to learn from His children. You said it’s the best college education we can have . . . trouble, expense, effort, study, confusion, and the greatest blessings and benefit of any career. And mother, I have found out it’s true!
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