This photograph, taken on my wedding day in 1989, is my favorite picture of Mama and me together, partly because I was looking my best and was about to marry the man I love, and partly because Mama was doing what she did naturally, showing how much she loved me. The summer before she died, she told me that she wanted to be buried with a picture of me "if that wasn't being selfish." Typically, she worried that she might be putting someone out by making a simple request for something that was meaningful to her. When she died a few months later, the articles we placed in her casket included Dentyne chewing gum, Kleenex, an extra pair of socks for her always-cold feet, a dollar bill from her brother who jokingly wanted to prove that you CAN take it with you, pictures of Daddy, photos of my sister and her family, pictures of my husband and children, and this one of the two of us. Seeing it squeezes my heart with a bittersweet joy that is closely akin to pain because I miss her so much.
Mother's Day used to be a big deal to me because it was the one day we actually took time to express how much we appreciated and loved her. Sappy, sentimental cards, fragrant roses and carnations, a long telephone call if not a visit, and a pastel sweater or bottle of perfume -- those were the coin of the realm in which we paid our tribute, and the explosion of pink roses that covered her casket was the perfect blanket for her grave on that cold November day.
I became a mother on April 12, 2001 when we adopted Sergei and Natasha in Arkhangelsk, Russia. He was a month shy of 14; she was 8 1/2, while I never carried them in my body, as my mother did me, I carried them in my heart. She had the fruitful experience of feeling as well as seeing her body swell with the new life that created space for itself literally in the center of her being. She made room in her heart, her body, and her life for me to grow and learn and laugh and love. I am forever grateful for her faith and her example but most of all for her love.
Those of us who adopt have a different, though in some ways, similar experience to those who give birth. Adopting means making room where once there was only yourself, and it means setting out on a journey to parts unknown. From the time Scott and I received the video and pictures of our daughter and knew that she was ours, and then when we discovered we could also adopt her brother, we were seized with a fearful joy. Being a mother has brought me tremendous happiness, amusement, anxiety, fear, frustration, and the most profound sense of the ways that God mothers and loves all of us. And there is a part of me that is pleased that I can look forward to texts and calls from my two "little monsters" this Sunday, but with Mother's Day approaching, I have to say that I miss my mother, dead these 7 1/2 years, more than tongue can tell.
John Wesley was especially close to his mother Susanna, and her death left a profound void in his heart and life. She had been his spiritual adviser, his critic and defender, and his rock and support in the tumult of the early days of the Methodist revival just as she had been from his birth. Unlike me, he was somehow able to preach and officiate at his mother's funeral, rejoicing in her release from sorrow and pain while also grieving his own loss of her physical presence in his life.
The picture below is of a miniature sculpture that perfectly captures Wesley's grief as he leans on her tombstone. In lifelike detail, his body expresses the sadness and resignation as he contemplates the finality of death, even as he commends her body to the earth in "sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ." He seems to be physically as well as emotionally spent as he rests his head in his right hand and as his left hand holds his hat loosely at his side. I think I have a glimmer of an idea of how he felt -- bereft and hurt, yet hopeful. Holding those feelings in tension, Wesley carried on with his proclamation of the good news, and so must I. Like him, I must pause to feel the depth of mourning for the mother I relied upon, the mother who always loved me, no matter what, and I must cling to that same resurrection promise and joyful hope. And so, just as Wesley did, even through my tears, when I remember her on Mother's Day and every day, I will say, 'Thanks be to God!
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