“Observations”

by: Donald S. Conkey

Date: May 8, 2008 - # 8819 - Mother’s Day 2008

On May 6, 1999 the Tribune printed a Mother’s Day tribute to my mother that I had penned on mother. Ironically the day it was printed was the day she was buried in the family cemetery in Huron County, Michigan.

By now we all should know our mortality is limited. Sooner or later most of us figure it out that we have come into mortality for a grand purpose: to be tested and tried and to prepare for that eternal life that follows mortality. Yet for most of us giving up close family members to their new birth, an event we call death, is hard. Few of us do this with out a period of grief and mourning.  For some the grieving period is short but for others grieving is often difficult and stretched out over a period of years, as with the death of small children. My second son died at age eleven forth years ago in June. His death, while difficult, taught me much about death, and what follows after death.

Religious and national customs often play a major role in the grieving process. Most of us have seen those small newspaper ‘in-remembrance’ ads run by family members honoring a loved one. I find those ads interesting and can feel empathy for the families who miss their loved ones. Others simply attend church more often. Some establish memorials with churches or schools. It’s all a part of the grieving process.

For me, remembering mom was easy. She was the ideal mother. It was she who gave me my mortal body to house my eternal spirit. It was she who cared for me, cried with me, and laughed with me for 93 years. It was she who took me to the induction center when I went off to war. It was she who worked with me for over thirty years gathering our family history, over 70,000 names, now bound in some 12 books, with each book covering a different family line. What choice memories these have been, and continue to be.

To celebrate Mother’s Day 2008 Joan and I, following our religious customs, took one of our granddaughters to our most sacred religious facility and there we celebrated Mother’s life by remembering her life that now includes her life beyond the veil, the veil called death. I will always remember mom and look to that day when we will once more be together, at the appropriate time and place, but for now it is time for each of us, mother and me, to be about our business, her there, me here. Joan, following her death, assumed her new role as matriarch of our own large and growing family.

 As special as mom was to her family of four, Joan is as special to our family of nine. As I watch Joan in her role of mother, and matriarch, I marvel at the love and compassion that flows from her actions and from her lips. Perhaps the greatest tribute ever given to a mother was given by Christ as he hung on the cross. It was while he was looking down upon his mother, and I suspect remembering her influence in his life, that he saw John the Beloved, and remembering his mother said to him, ‘Behold thy mother.’ And the record says: “And from that hour the disciple took her (Mary) into his own home.” A bond between mother and child is real - and eternal, a natural law.

Recently I watched the tears flow from the mother of a new born whose child was being given a name and a blessing according to our beliefs and customs. It was a tender moment. Her tears flowed through smiles of joy and happiness. As I listened to the sweet blessing given this child, I thought back to my own childhood days,  remembering the lessons I learned from mother as she instilled in me a faith in God as she took me to church to be taught of God, and to learn  how to communicate with God:  in prayer. These are powerful life changing lessons every child should learn at the knee of their mother with a father giving assistance.

My life has been intertwined with the lives of many women, or budding women – great-grandmothers, grandmothers, my mother, my wife, six daughters, three daughters-in-law, 15 granddaughters, two granddaughters’ in-law, and nine great-granddaughters. And I cannot forget those ancestral grandmothers that date back to the early 1600s.

There is something special about these women in my life They all share something special with each other – they are all daughters of a loving Heavenly Father who sent them into mortality to perform a noble work – to become mothers and nurture and lead one or more of His spirit children back to Him.

Parents are given so little time to teach their children so very much. And most of that teaching comes from our mothers. Mother’s Day 2008, indeed, should be a very special day for all who have mothers – and that is everyone.