The Glorious Sadness of Mother’s Day

Holidays have the potential to be sad affairs. None more so than the days dedicated to loved ones. Memory is a gift but can be an emotional peril. St. Augustine said it can be a tomb in which we are buried. He was mostly talking about our memories of sin, but even our memories of goodness can overwhelm us with a sense of loss. Mother’s Day is such a day. Yet even the sadness brought about by our memories is a gift, for it testifies to the glorious reality of love that was and is real. 

Since the loss of my own mother to cancer at the too-young age of 63 twenty-one years ago, Mother’s Day has always been emotionally difficult. I’m writing this column before the day arrives, but I know it will be so again. On Friday morning, Houston-area talk radio host Michael Berry did his special Mother’s Day show. He read messages, played short recordings, and took calls from listeners about their own mothers. He encouraged his audience, rightly, to call their mothers that day—“Don’t wait for Mother’s Day!” As I often do, I wanted to take Berry’s advice, for it is sound. But the realization hit me yet again: I can’t do so.   

You’d think I would have adjusted after all these years. When Mom died, my cousin Jennifer—having lost her mother, my aunt, nine years before—said that I would always want to call my mom up. She was exactly right. And yet it strikes me every time I realize it.

What is it that strikes me? Many people talk about a mother’s love in terms of “comfort,” but they forget the older meaning of comfort: “with strength.” C. S. Lewis experienced that loss very early, when he lost his mother at the age of nine. He wrote in his memoir, Surprised by Joy: “With my mother’s death, all settled happiness disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of joy; but no more of the old security.” “Her absence,” he said, “is like the sky, spread over everything.”

Indeed, mothers, it is said, are “Mama Bears” who will defend, rightly or wrongly, their brood and fight for and with them. Writing about his mother’s death, the journalist Mitch Albom observed that the true effect of the death of one’s parents is a feeling of being truly “alone” and “without backup” in one’s “battles.”

Mom’s “backup” was perhaps most obvious in my brother’s and my sports events, of which she missed precious few that I can never remember. She was always rooting for me. My own kids get embarrassed when I shout too loudly at sporting events; but I don’t think I hold a candle to my own mom. She was a much gentler soul than I. Nevertheless, I also think I yell at umpires and referees less than she did.

And when it came to school itself, she was similarly always there—literally. Once both my brother and I were in school, she got jobs there, first in the cafeteria and then doing secretarial and accounting jobs in order to be near us and keep the same hours. If I forgot something, she would be willing to drive home and get it. And she would also be there to talk to if things went completely awry. She did the same for other kids, too. She would keep a tin of candies on her desk to give to those for whom a hug was just not enough. She was the back-up in battle, the provider of security for a lot of kids and even some of the adults there.

Of course, my mother would not defend me if I were being punished with just cause. I spent my share of time in the principal’s office, sometimes getting paddled, when I was younger. But she would move heaven and earth if I were being treated unfairly.