My Mothers Hands

then I refused to see the resemblance. I was afraid that if I looked like my mother, then I would act like her too.

My mother was part traditional/part tyrannical. At least to my child’s eye.

She cooked. She cleaned. She baked chocolate chip cookies.

But buried deep in the pockets of her apron there was a sadness, an insecurity, and a loneliness so extreme it manifested in many ways. She was easy to anger, hard to please and in need of a lot of attention.

As a little girl I was always trying to please her and be her favorite, even if it meant tattling on one of my sisters. I needed to be deemed the “good” daughter.

As a teenager I rebelled. I wanted my mother to know how much she’d disappointed me.

As an adult, I craved her time and attention: a lunch out, a day of shopping, a visit to my house for a coffee chat. But my mother flatly exclaimed she preferred to stay home.

Years after I was married, I was able to bury the need for my mother. I focused on my own family, pretending it was enough.

On the very day my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, everything within me changed. It wasn’t about me any more. I didn’t care how she had made me feel once upon a time. I only cared about how she felt, and how to get her through this.

I began calling her every day and asking how she was. There wasn’t much to talk about other than her illness, but I was happy just to hear her voice. I’d visit, not expecting anything from her other than to be near. I didn’t judge what she said or did because there was so little time. If she mentioned needing something (like money for the outrageously expensive pills which allowed her to digest a meal), I’d willingly offer it.

It felt good just to “do” for her.

A couple days before she died, as I was pushing my mother in her wheelchair, I got up the nerve to tell her that I loved her and shared how much I loved spending time with her. This felt very intimate to me, thereby unfamiliar. After all, my standard share was a peck on the cheek and a distracted “love you.”

When my mother sweetly replied, in an unguarded voice which was lightly laced with morphine, “You can see me any time you want,” I realized that I always could have.

Maybe she wasn’t there for me in exactly the way I had wished, but my mother had always been there for me.

We put her in hospice that day. As I helped care for her, I held her hands in mine and realized how dear those hands were to me.

Today, I look at my own, mirrors of my mother’s and I thank God for giving me these hands. They are the truest thing I have of hers. http://www.amazines.com