Monday, May 11, 2015
Good morning,
I have wanted to share this story for some months now, but have been waiting for the right time. With Mother’s Day yesterday, there is no better time than now.
I have a friend named Liz (seriously, this story is not about me!) whose mother’s name was Carol. Ironically, my mother’s name is Carole as well, just spelled different. Liz and I share a friendship that goes back 2 1/2 decades, and even though we don’t talk or see each other as often as we would like, we can go for months without visiting and then get together and pick up like we never missed a beat. We all have friends like that.
Whenever we did visit, our conversation always turned to mom, checking on how they each were and sharing the latest stories of them, always laughing as we so enjoyed the common bond we had in the relationship we shared with our mom’s. We often talked about getting our mom’s together, as they had a lot in common, but we never followed through. Liz’s mom suddenly became ill last year, and in a few brief months she was gone. Liz and I talked several times over those months, and I tried to be there for her as much as I could. It hit me hard, not to mention how it affected her.
I went to Carol’s funeral, which was a beautiful service. She was very involved in her church and one of the things she took care of was the garden. The pastor told great stories of her creativity and talent in planting and arranging flowers. He talked about how she never used the color red, didn’t care for it and didn’t feel like there was a place for it in her garden or flower arrangements. One year, she approached the pastor and asked if she could decorate the church for Christmas. The pastor prayed about it and, with concern, confided in his wife because he wasn’t sure how you could decorate for Christmas without red flowers! Reluctantly, he agreed. As always, never to disappoint, Carol’s decorations were stunning and the pastor shared the amazement on how he never really noticed the “missing red flowers”.
A few days later, I called Liz to check in on her. We talked about the service and I mentioned how inspiring and humorous I found the story of her mom and the “no red flowers” rule. She then shared with me that she never knew her mom didn’t like red flowers! Yep! She went on to say that her mom would come to her house on weekends and would always bring her flowers from her garden, and they were mostly red! She would tell her that she needed to keep some of them for herself, never knowing that she was giving them to Liz to get rid of them! I think we laughed so hard we had tears in our eyes. Then Liz said, I keep racking my brain to remember how many times I sent her flowers that had red in them and she never said anything! It was wonderful, and a typical conversation, talking about mom and ending our chat in laughter!
Moms are special; there is no arguing that! Whether they are here with us physically, or live on in our hearts, they continue to surprise us with precious gifts that warm our souls, soften our tears and give our laugh lines character! And what a blessing that is!