Mother's Day Grief and Gratefulness

In Gratitude for Mira

In gratitude, I thank my mother

for the pain she alone

felt, in a linoleum-floored hospital bed 

as she labored to deliver me into this world,

without many words of English, as a Polish-speaking

nurse came to interpret the foreign feelings and words.

In gratitude, I thank my Mama

for going through this labor again

to bring me home the gift of my lovely sister Eva,

my partner in flower-watering and care-giving;

the gift of my brother Henio, who I sent her forth

to deliver in my innocence and to whom I can wholely attribute

my hero-complex—as I saved him from his driving a rolling Oldsmobile

down the driveway to the ditch,

as I saved his shoe from going down a flooded creek and

thus from the wrath of our mother, and as I saved him

from the alone encounter with the kindergarten teacher in a new school—

and the gift of my sister Jakubina,

whose beauty and gentle spirit,

reflects, as Maria, one of our many cousins who loved Mama, says,

of Aunt Myra herself.

In gratitude, I thank my Mama

for sharing meal after meal with me

from her breast; from the high chair where we learned

of  President Kennedy’s death

and cried together;

from the many vegetables she grew

so that we could grow

healthy and strong;

from the chickens, pigs and steers

she fed and raised;

from the milk she squeezed out of the teats in the cold barn.

In gratitude, I thank her

for each chicken’s head

she felled with her axe on the tree stump,

telling me later that it was a horrible business,

but she did it for us—for our strength, for our education,

just as her mother, Babcia, sold eggs in Poland for her boarding school

education to be a teacher, taking the train to another town.

I thank her

for each chicken feather

she plucked—each and every one—thousands

of them, I give thanks.

And for waking up early and for sending me off

to college so that I could come to her profession as well.

In gratitude, I thank Mum, the Baba of my children,

for her pain when my own labor came,

for taking care of her Rysiu for five weekends in a row,

so that I could do my graduate studies.

I thank her for caring for him and Franiu while I traveled

to conferences and adventures

and for the cards we have from them still

because of the craft time she shared with them.

I thank her for the many sweaters, gloves, and hats

 she made for them and me,

and for the books she loved and

we loved together.

In gratitude, I thank Mum

for her love of flowers and the outdoors—

because as my dear husband, who she was grateful for, says to me:

“You have the expanse of the farm in your soul.”

She was also deeply grateful, as I am, for the uniquely-suited and deeply-loyal

husbands of my sisters, Patrick and Daniel, and their love and care for their flowers.

She let me grow and care for a patch of flowers on the farm,

and at the nursing homes, so that my own garden became a daily comfort

as she was sick, as she died.  And as I pulled dead marigolds off their stems,

my head down in the orange and gold of grief, I saw the Babcias and Stryankas running

towards her in joy with their arms open wide, “Mira!  Mira!”---and of course crying.

In gratitude, I thank Mum

for staying on this earth until I got to know her on a deep level,

past the childhood ungratefulness, passed the teenage angst and selfishness,

past the busy parenthood and career building.

I got to experience her unconditional love late,

beyond the childish love where I thought she was just

demanding and annoying. 

And after her truly annoying initial dealings with doctors,

to a place of accepting their attempts at help.

She waited, she held on,

through despair and pain,

through the humility of others taking care of her

in a linoleum-floored hospital bed.

She let me lose my temper, demanding better care.

She let me have her sit in her wheelchair in the lobby in her private pain,

so that it would shame the sluggish staff to quickly move.

She let me love every chin hair, fingernail, permed curl,

She let me love her stroke-curved toe, her hairy shins, the blackened thin-skin patches,

the crooked arm, the sharp blue eyes and tongue, the beautiful skin,

her suffering soul.

She patiently let me put her to bed, not knowing that I would be the last person

to do so.  Although she often said, “ouch!” she didn’t then. 

And as Eve and I wept about her life of suffering, during what we didn’t know were her

final moments, and came to realize that her suffering gave her such strength for

others—for the many nurse’s aides, friends with children, for us—she then took her last

breath to remind us that suffering is not without heart, without love for others.

As children, she took care of our bodies and souls,

As adults, we took care of her body, and she took care of our spirits.

Wikipedia, our communal knowledge source, says

“Mira” is a giant red star,

that it is a “brightest periodic variable in the sky that is not visible to the naked eye

for part of its cycle” and that there is a disc that is “being accreted from material

 in the solar wind from Mira and could eventually form new planets.”

In gratitude, I cherish that I am a part of her constellation,

I am grateful that we will be able to continue to form new readings

from our gratitude from the deep and rich source,

of light and being and life.