Mothers' Day

Dear Rachel,

Apparently I’m not as smart as I thought I was. (And nowhere near as smart as you thought I was. But I guess daughters always give their daddies more credit than they deserve.)

I somehow never saw Mother’s Day sneaking up on me. I knew it was coming, of course, and I knew it would be tough for all the mommies: Debbie, Lesley, Andi (grandmommies, after all, are simply mommies-once-removed), etc. But I figured that it wouldn’t affect me much. After all, I am neither a mom nor a daughter, and my own mother passed away almost 10 years ago.

I was pretty safe, I thought.

But no, I had a tough time on Mother’s Day. I kept thinking about what a great mother you were to Shaylyn. (Lesley and I were amazed at your maturity and your patience. Where did that come from, we both wondered?) I thought about my mother, your “Grams,” and how much I miss her.

And I worried about “the mommies” in our family. And about all the other mommies for whom Mother’s Day was not a day of joyful celebration, but of loss and pain. I remembered Elizabeth Stone’s comment that becoming a parent was “…to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” So many, many mothers’ hearts have been broken while walking around outside of their bodies.

Ironic, isn’t it? Mother’s Day is so…Hallmarkian. It’s an artificial holiday, really. Well-deserved, of course, but pushed largely by the greeting card companies, the flower vendors, the candy manufacturers, restaurants. It’s driven mainly by commerce, at least these days.

How could something so artificial be so painful?

And now, another date to dread: This weekend is the anniversary of your death. On the 28th of this month it will have been exactly one year since you were murdered. A full year of numbness, then pain, then more numbness, then still more pain. A full year of trying to figure out why this happened, and of wondering if there were anything any of us could have done to stop it. A full year of hell.

Love,

Dad