Mother's Day 2019

 Yesterday, in stores, cashiers kept telling me, "Happy Mother's Day".   For many it will be.  Tomorrow, my one child, who is in his late 20's, will come over to help put air conditioners in, do some other chores for me and his father, and have a home-cooked dinner (by my spouse).

This is the first Mother's Day ever without his Mom for my husband; his 90 year old mother passed away last year the day after Thanksgiving.  He watched his mother, who raised four children (one of them autistic), turn into a frail woman who needed oxygen 24/7, and eventually could not get out of bed on her own. 

His last living aunt passed away on Wednesday at age 107.  One of her two sons predeceased her - two weeks after my mother in law died.

Do you want to know something strange?  Last year, as my mother in law spent her last months in a nursing home, I kept seeing butterflies.  Even this January, when I was down in Florida, I kept seeing butterflies.

This spring, I keep seeing cardinals.  In fact, as I wrote this blog post yesterday, (sitting in the back yard) I saw one briefly.  And, earlier this week, the day after my husband's aunt died, I dreamed that I was sitting in my house and a black bird flew over to me, as a pet bird might.  I was so delighted as the black bird started to play with me.  I felt the type of love, right in my dream, that I would feel for a pet.  It's been years since I've had a pet, though. (Long story).

So who knows?   Maybe I'm being told not to be so sad.

I am reminded, though, of all the people for whom Mother's Day is a day of hurt and/or sadness.  One of them may be you, or someone you know.

Be gentle to people day.  You don't know what feelings today triggers in them.

To everyone in my life who has had a mother, or is/was a mother, or who acts as a mother to a child, I wish you the happiest of days today.