We Are Our Mother's Daughters

This was a part of our 10-year plan, the one we'd bring to fruition after our children were older and we were near retirement and could pay off just a little more debt then our beautiful and grace-filled mother passed away unexpectedly on July 15, 2015 and our lives shattered, much like a mirror would on a hardwood floor.

Our lives became more intertwined and we started to invest real time in our mourning father and in each other. More family dinners began to take place, holidays were sweeter and so--so--many private moments of heartache took place within each daughter's life.

I avoided the flower department of any business, could not drive past her resting place without stopping and dreaded every Wednesday morning because that was the last morning I spoke with my mother. My daughters were so tiny and had to adjust to me caring for them everyday and not their Nana. I was very much inadequate in many ways to comfort the hurt they felt because my heart was broken in a way only a death of one you love with ALL YOUR heart can relate. I lost weight and sleep and myself in the months that followed her absence.

My husband was my anchor and I, the boat, I was wandering with the waves and did not want to return to shore to walk an earth that my mother no longer was a part of.

I returned to teaching high school English changed. I was distracted and trying to heal and not allowing anyone to provide help or guidance outside of my husband and sisters.

Our mother was a collector, some would say a hoarder, but she sought things that were broken and created a new life for them. I was a child raised in a home of poverty not even aware of that until I entered high school and saw the great divide between the poor and well-off. Our mother would buy the softest material at garage sales and create underwear for the three younger children until I was in the 5th grade. She would take discarded dresses from past time periods and adjust seam lines, add new elastic and beautiful detailed ruffles to create our Sunday dresses for Easter. She not only did this but taught each daughter to sew and create beauty in any way we saw it. She cooked and cleaned everyday of her life and had the softest hands.

She was a mother that changed my very understanding of the world and how it worked to show me that compassion and kindness are the creators of change and that hope cures a great many ailments of the human heart and soul. She gained all her strength from Christ and prayed over us each and every day. She made us aware that we were not meant to be accustomed to this world, to the routine, to the lackluster the world would offer day after day disguised as beauty, a wolf in sheep's clothing.

We are practical and not drawn with yearning to the modern style or push to get and want and desire and yearn for the popular by demand. We see the beauty in the broken, we are the broken that Christ died for, we are the broken that our mother mended with those soft hands and we are the broken that hope to help others see that its quite alright to not be whole.

The past is a treasure to me now and the memories of my mother and the eternal lessons she had instilled in each of us, her daughters, are ones we will carry and are honored to possess.

We are our mother's daughters.