Looking Back....Just For a Second

 

My mother was confronted with her own mortality this weekend.  A good friend that she has known since seventh grade, hung around with as a couple, and raised their kids together passed away on Saturday.  She knew that she was sick but got a call from her sister saying she had slipped into a coma.  My mother was right in the middle of a major yard sale but as she hung up the phone felt this pressing need to change clothes and go.

Her friend was in a coma but my mom said that she talked to her like she was listening.  She told her how much their friendship had meant and thanked her for all of good times they had together.  Four hours later her friend passed away.  Mom said that if she hadn't went it would have been hard.  You don't know my mother but just the simple fact that she changed clothes and did go was major.  She said that as she looked on her friend it dawned on her that they were the same age.  

I was watching the Judd show on OWN today--they are taking a tour and trying to bring up and heal all of the hurt from the past.  Then I started thinking of my mother, grandmother, and a great-grandmother that I never knew.  The past.....

My grandmother's mother was half Indian and all I could ever gather from my grandmother was she didn't have a very good reputation.  My grandmother was left a lot and at times stayed with a couple who owned a bar.  Stability was not in her childhood and she left school in the sixth grade.  She married my grandfather at fifteen because he lived up the floor from her and she had no where else to go.

My grandfather was a good provider materially but was emotionally unable to give my grandmother what she needed.  A lot of anger was there along with a lot of good.  My mother never got a long with my grandmother while she was at home.  She was too much like her I guess.  She married my father at sixteen to be able to leave the house.  Afterwards they became best friends up until the day she passed away.  I would have to say she was my mother's only friend--true friend.

Our relation was--is complex at best; we were closer than what she had growing up.  I don't need a tour like the Judd's to figure things out.  She has my grace--I understand now where she had been and where she is at this time in life.  It doesn't take just one childhood to create who you are--there is a history involved.  Today I was looking back--way back and remembering things--understanding things and allowing myself the freedom to accept things--just because that is what Christ has done for us.

Every mother will change something from her childhood to make her children's life better.  My grandmother gave her family the gift of family.  Her house was the gathering place up until she passed away from cancer.  And even in death her family surrounded her as she passed away in a house that I can close my eyes at this minute and feel like I am there.

My mother's childhood was filled with drinking, fighting, and the things that go along with it.  She told me that she would always say when she had children they wouldn't be exposed to it.  She kept that promise to herself.  My father was a drinker before he became saved.  I only saw my father twice in my entire childhood under the influence.  She would make sure we were in bed and never--never said bad things about him to us.  My mother gave us the gift of a childhood--just able to be kids.

I promised myself that when I had kids I would always eat with them.  Nothing against my mother, but my father was gone a lot and her way of coping was to eat by herself.  I always sat with them at lunch and meal times because it was important to me.  I wasn't an angry mother or tried not to be.  I didn't have a problem apologizing to them if I felt I was in the wrong.

So when the circle continues my children will take what they like, discard or make better the things that they didn't like.  That's the way it should be; I don't think you need to throw people under the bus for childhood wrongs.   Enough already--let's move on.