By Jeff Orvis
How many of us have played that mental
game, “If I knew then what I know now?” I guess birthdays are a
logical time to think about that. Some folks, those who tend to often
view the glass as half-empty, drag themselves down by wishing they
had done things differently over a certain time span. Those of us who
recognize that God is in control are sometimes given the gift of
recognizing what He has done for us over the years, regardless of our
current situation.
Some would say I have every right to
be down in the dumps today. I just completed my 60th year
on this earth, am unemployed with an uncertain future and am about to
observe my first Mother's Day without Mom. But there are certainly a
lot of good things to think about, even with some of those dark
clouds hanging around.
Fifty years ago, I was counting the
days until the end of my third grade at Pleasant View School. It was
a newer school and Miss Rabe was a nice teacher. But my one year at
Pleasant View meant a bus ride every day. The fourth grade in the
fall meant a return to the school within walking distance of home.
As my friends and I awaited three
months away from the books, three months of adventures in the
neighborhood and the nearby woods, we had no way of knowing that in a
few short months we would all experience the national grief of the
assassination of a president. A few years later, we would witness
assassinations that would take a very popular political figure (Bobby
Kennedy) and the soul of the civil rights movement (Martin Luther
King). It wouldn't be long after that when we would wonder if we
could afford the $3,500 a year it would take to attend a small
private college or if we would have to settle for a state university
at a cost of about $2,000. The young men in my class also had to
worry about the draft, the draft lottery and possible education
deferments, as very few of us wanted a trip to southeast Asia, even
if Uncle Sam was paying the way.
In the next few years, there was the
college experience and many of us began our careers. Three years
after the end of college, I took the giant step of leaving the
Quad-City area for my first try at independent living. That try came
to an unexpected end four years later with a call from one of Mom's
best friends, telling me that Dad had suffered a fatal heart attack
in our driveway.
A few months later, I came home to
live with Mom as she continued my dad's photography business. Two
years later, the publisher of the paper I had left asked me to
return, this time it was a 14-year association which only ended with
a staff reduction. There was a short-lived experiment as a newspaper
owner, more than a decade at a newspaper in a neighboring county and
a year as a web site editor.
Each of those stops afforded me many
memories, some of which I might talk about at another time.
Personally, I saw my sister marry a preacher. They had two great kids
and became grandparents a few years ago. Mom married a man she knew
from church and they spent a few happy years together before he
passed away at home. I finally tied the knot about 15 years after a
lot of my high school friends. I inherited a ready-made family of two
young boys and we had some very happy, challenging years together.
Years later, when the marriage had
ended and the economy had claimed my job, I think it was God's way of
telling me it was time to once again come home. With my sister and
her family committed to life in Florida, I was glad to have a chance
to once again be closer to Mom, aunts and uncles and cousins.
When the job market didn't produce any
prospects, I devoted more and more time to doing what I could to help
Mom around the house – shopping for groceries, doing a lot of the
cooking and trying not to question her independence when she insisted
on going to Christmas Eve church services across town in a blinding
snowstorm.
August of 2012 is a month I hope I
never have to repeat. I spent it at Mom's bedside in the hospital, at
a rehab center and then back at the hospital as she underwent three
abdominal surgeries in the span of less than 30 days. That grand
celebration of her 80th birthday in February would prove
to be her last.
So Sunday is Mother's Day. Some would
say they wouldn't blame me if I wanted to stay in bed, cover up my
head and mourn. But I wasn't built that way. I suspect that Mom and
Dad would find a way to come back and kick me in the butt if I did
that. So instead, I'm going to get up, go to church, sing in our
awesome choir and thank God for my Mom. I'll also thank him for the
good report we received on my sister's recent surgery. Then I'll come
home, pour a big glass of orange juice and toast Mom's memory as I
smell the lilacs across the way and listen to the various birds we
have in our neighborhood.
Somehow, I think she'd understand.
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