Â§hria's Spot

The hot and cold of mother's day

The images that spring to mind when you say the words 'mother's day' are images of things such as flowers, chocolates, Sunday brunch and a special dinner. Most people in our society see smiling mom’s with loving children having burnt toast and eggs in breakfast. They see special family dinners and picnics in the park. They see a day spent with family doing loving things.

I guess I’m not most people.

When you say 'mother's day' to me I see an image of my sister-in-law weeping with a pile of envelopes in her hand. She is long dead now but she used to check almost daily for news of her lost children taken in to foster care long before she straightened out her life. I see her straightening her face and opening her arms to her younger children and being the whole, healthy, strong mom they needed to rely on when her heart was broken so badly by her husband's fists and the system's cold shoulder. I see her keeping things together for them when the world was falling apart outside her door and in her soul. She died in June of 2001.

I see my friend Ann Marie struggling to stand when she was so full of cancer and pain that she couldn't eat or sleep. I see her struggling with all her heart to walk to her dying mother's side, to hold her children's hands and to keep things together when the world was falling apart outside her door and in her body. She died in April 2004 and her mother died in June of 2000.

I see my friend Michele holding tight to her loving husband's hand and trying valiantly to keep it together for him and for their son when her body was long gone – lungs, bones and lymphatic system filled with cancer. She died February 23, 2006.

I see the face of Melody Burtis smiling from a photograph of her with her son and daughter. She and her son died April 20, 2006.

I see the face of Debbie Doucet smiling from a photograph of her with her wonderful husband and two beautiful daughters. Her husband, Donald Doucet became the first police officer in Sault Ste. Marie to die on duty. He died on mother's day this year and they buried him on his daughter’s 17^th birthday.

Somehow, the cold touches of tragedy found in the lives of the other mothers I've known and felt for are fading the warm, loving touch of my own mother. Even the loving hugs from my children seem a little further away these days. The tragedies I become a part of on a daily basis so that I can write about them with the intensity they deserve are changing me and not for the better, I fear.

Please could I have some happy stories to write about for a while?