Mother's Memoir

Mother’s Memoir

I suspect many of you will relate when I share with you my astonishment at the power attending me as I write my mother’s story. I feel as though I’m in a whirlwind of miracles which are reshaping me. My motives are transforming. My heart is softening. A new tenderness and compassion for my mother has possession of my heart.

I am confident God is pleased and supportive when we undertake to strengthen family ties, even if by accident. I never intended to write my mother’s story. It was my story I wanted to write. But upon learning that a million words need to flow from our pens before our writing is worthy of publication, I put my memoir on hold and took up a ‘less meaningful’ endeavor, one which might contribute to the backstory of my own.

It was then the winds began to swirl. Photos, family films, and journals my family thought were lost to decades of Air Force travel and neglect mysteriously found their way to my doorstep.

Just last week, my husband was doing a book signing in Hawaii and a woman approached him, “Remember me? I was in your class in Colorado over two decades ago. I’m on a mission here in Hawaii. Your wife’s parents got married in France and were stationed there with my parents. Here, I copied a film my dad took of your wife’s parents picnicking.”

Dozens of insights, impressions, and spiritual encounters have sprinkled my journey. There isn’t the space to articulate the whole of my experience over the last several months so I attempted encapsulation in a poem.

FAIR WARNING: I avow no knowledge of technical poetic construction. I admit only to honest emotional expression.

She Gave It All Up for Me 

I wanted to write my memoir

An outlet for grief and pain

But learned, ‘a million words be penned

Before it could get gain'

“My story won’t be writing junk,

Another one I’ll find”

And so I began my mother’s tale

Naive of the treasures entwined

The Lord began His mighty work

Enlisting family there

To open minds and soften hearts

A grander view to share

Phone calls, interviews, memories combed

Trust grew and hearts were won

Truth emerged, the shock sublime,

“I’m not the cheated one”

My pain but draught before her own

How could I have been so blind?

The person I accused for years

Indeed was the one most kind

My softened heart allowed the thought

That perhaps before we came

We previewed the conditions here

And she chose all the blame

She mended the fence that others broke

That we could all be free

To have the joys she went without

She gave it all up for me