Mom

My mom died 16 years ago.  There's so much I love and miss about her, and yet I do feel her loving presence in my life time and time again.  One of the last things she told me was that she would be at the crossroads of my life and those have been definite dates with her for me....my wedding, births, baby blessings, and baptisms.  There have also been many times on average days when I have felt her grace my life with her presence and love.  It's true that our family is eternal.

A friend of mine, Beth B. once gave a talk in church about joy.  I felt the Comforter when she read John 16: 20-22, and have relied on those words Jesus spoke to get me through life without my mom's physical presence.  I love how Christ understands the pain of loss of a loved one.  The hole in my heart I've had since my mom's death 16 years ago will be healed at our reunion because of our Saviour.  This I know.

A few thoughts on my mom, for posterity....

I've said this many times...I'm amazed how my mom, with 10 children, could connect, truly know, and deeply love each of us.  She saw each of us through the Lord's eyes.  When I received my patriarchal blessing I remember her loving words, "I knew that."  When we made bad choices, she pleaded with the Lord on our behalf, she spoke plainly with us, and did all she could to help us.  She was our biggest cheerleader when we achieved good things.  I love this picture of my mom at my older sister's temple wedding.  I love that she was candidly caught basking in the joy of that celebration.  I remember her being on cloud 9 that day.  After years of sacrifice and dedication, she was quick to recognize the Lord's mercy and love that day.  

I marvel at my mom's efforts to mother each and every one of us.  I'm sure it was exhausting work.  When I came home from my mission for a weekend to visit my mom while she was in advanced stages of bone cancer, she and I were looking at her worn and wrinkly hands.  She was embarrassed about the wrinkles, but I said, "You earned every one of them."  In fact those wrinkles and the bags under her eyes came from years of service and sacrifice for each one of her children.  Cancer wreaked havoc on my dear mother physically, but she was truly beautiful, inside and out, in the real sense of the word. 

  

The Sampler with love for the one...

When I was pregnant with Christina, I thought of a sampler my mom made me when I was a little girl, and I wondered how I could duplicate it.  I looked and looked and couldn't seem to find an alphabet pattern quite as beautiful as the one my mom stitched for me.  Soon after Christina was born, my mom's sister, Karen sent me a package.  She said my mom told her to send it to me at some point, and Karen felt like with the birth of our first girl, I would know what to do with it....my sampler.
 I sat there marveling at the detail in the sampler, something I'm sure I didn't fully appreciate as a child.  I chuckled at the dated colors.  The sampler was more gorgeous than I remembered it being.  I saw the date, "1978," did some quick math, and realized that at that time my mom had 8 children in the house.  How amazing that with all of these children to love and care for, she took the time, months, maybe years, to make this beautiful needlework just for me.   She was a mother of 10 with love and devotion for each one; something I always think of when I see this sampler hanging in Christina's room.

Another treasure...

The Christmas before my mom died, she and my dad gave each of us a journal with their testimonies in the form of letters making up the first few pages of the journal.  What a blessing it is for me to read how my mom felt when she found out she was pregnant with me, her observations of me as a baby, her expressions of love, her testimony....

"...I don't know what the Lord does have in store for me in these next several months, but this I do know, that he lives, that he loves each one of you , my children, and he in his perfect love and wisdom will bless us all.  I may have to wait for you awhile in Heaven, but I will always be your mother and never far from you.  I will enjoy  with you all those things mothers love to share with their daughters--choosing an eternal mate, bringing each of your own children into the world, enjoying their first words, their baptism, graduations, and on and on and on.  I'll be there by you." 

With all my heart, thank you, mom.

Love you more.