It’s just around the corner and is one of the most important days of the year. One day where we focus on mom. Being a father, I can attest that it really doesn’t matter all that much if my family fusses over me that day…I’m totally content with just being together and having a BBQ or ordering in some of my favorite food. I see that with my brothers and I’ve seen it with my Father as well….but MOM – now that’s a different story.
Why is it different? It just is. For the vast majority of cases, I firmly believe it’s the mom’s of the world that mold and glue families together. They set a template for the children and over all make the family better. Mom’s really are the heartbeat of a family, and I have always believed the most important job on the planet is raising and looking after a family commonly referred to as being a MOM.
Women are always cleaning, and I don’t mean vacuuming or dishes and laundry. Women have and are always cleaning up the mess in this world mostly created by men. Think of big messes and I guarantee a man is behind it 99 out of 100 times.
I was very lucky that all the women in my family were fantastic women. They were strong but yet unbelievably gentle. They showed me and taught me by their actions, words, mannerisms and actions what a woman was about. How a woman should be treated and respected. I honestly believe and always have that the most prestigious job in the world isn’t being a doctor, lawyer or president of a country but being a good mom.
I know for a fact all the women in my life have made the men they were with much better people, myself included. I have always had the utmost respect for the women in my family, not because they were older than me, but because they earned it and deserved it.
I am so lucky and so thankful that I had the best mom a person could ever want. My mom was a stay at home mom and I’m so grateful she was. As a kid growing, learning, absorbing life, I always had my compass (mom) to steer me and guide me and help me figure things out. She wasn’t trying to teach me “how to be a man” but how to be a good person. How to understand my emotions, How to be kind and caring and why that is important. How to talk about my feelings. No school teaches those things but they are among the most important lessons a person can ever learn.
If you gave me a million dollars for every “bad experience” I had with my mom, I wouldn’t be able to tell you one. I had a particular fondness for my mom’s mom whom I referred to as Gramma on the Farm (because she lived on a farm and my other gramma lived in town)
She was the most content, happy, positive, peaceful person I have ever known and I can see how that was passed down from her to her daughter, my mom. It seems a bit strange perhaps, but nothing made me more happy than introducing my then pregnant wife Joan to her, and afterwards she said that she really liked her a lot and said she was a good girl. That meant everything to me and 40 years later, she is still proving her view right.
There is a saying that men often look for a wife that’s like their mother and if so I know I found mine as she is just as amazing in everyway, as my gramma and mom. It’s a compliment of the highest as I hold no one in higher regard.
My gramma on the farm was on her last legs and I remember feeling I had to make the trip from Saskatoon (where we lived at the time) to Weyburn where she lived. We had a great visit with her in the nursing home, and although I knew she was sick, she did nothing but smile, ask about us, laugh and just seem so at ease and content. I remember starting to tear up knowing this was probably the last time I would see her and even then she was concerned about ME and said “why are YOU crying, I’M the one dying, but that’s OK. I’ve had a good life, a good family and I have you to know I did a good job” I can go now, I’m happy. A few days later she passed away. It’s like she was waiting for Joan and I to come see her.
My only regret was that she passed before Joan gave birth to our daughter who I REALLY wanted her to see. Seeing what a wonderful woman my daughter has grown up to be, I see that Gramma lives on though those lessons she passed down to her daughter, to my wife and now to her great grand daughter.
My mom is now 88 and has dementia and lives in a special care home. She has no idea who anyone is any more and can barely speak. I have a hard time going to visit her since it absolutely kills me to see her this way. To see absolutely every single thing this amazing woman has experienced and accomplished in her life wiped away from her…it’s too much. It’s a horrible disease I can only equate to a living death. I’m mad as she didn’t deserve this ending and I can only have faith that she will regain it all when she passes on to a better place.
My wife now leads our family who truly is the best person I have ever known. She has made me a better person than I though I was capable of and she has created and raised two absolutely amazing kids who are now an absolutely amazing young man and woman.
What could I possibly get on this one day to say how great they are? How much I respect them? How thankful I am? How amazed I am? How much I love them?
I know if I were to ask them, in their usual mom way they would just say “nothing, I’m just being a mom”
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