January 12, 1928 - February 3, 1985
Eastland | Big Spring | Sweetwater, Texas

Memories of a mother who was always there

"A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real success." -- Sigmund Freud

"What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, fixed in permanent outline forever." -- T.W. Higginson

"A man never sees all that his mother has been to him till it's too late to let her know that he sees it." -- W.D. Howells.

By DANNY REAGAN

A few weeks ago, I had settled down for a rare afternoon nap when the phone at the side of the bed rang.

"Hello, Danny. This is your mother. I'm so excited ..."

I tried to say something, but I was astonished. Even though the voice was clearly my mother's, I knew the conversation was impossible.

Finally, as my eyes began misting over, I managed in a cracking voice, "Mom, talk to me." My words were barely intelligible.

All I heard after that was loud static. Then I opened my eyes. The only detail of my surroundings that changed in the slightest was the phone. I wasn't holding it; it was still on the bedside table. That's how real the dream had been.

* * *

This is the first Mother's Day I will spend without being able to send my mother a card, call her up or go see her.

Suffering from the flu in February, she entered a hospital in Sweetwater. She had a stroke early on a Sunday morning and died. Saturday evening, I was talking to her on the phone, listening to her tell me how next time she wouldn't wait so long to go to the doctor. Less than 12 housrs later, she was dead. She was only 57.

But this story isn't about my sorrow; grief touches us all, and I've been lucker than many people in avoiding it. This concerns memories, time, love and an institution that has compelled saints, poets, heroes, villains and just about all of us to live our lives the way we do.

The first person who teaches us how to live is usually our mother. Our lives are put in order, or disorder, by much of what she does. Fathers play more of an important function in today's society fulfilling the role as "cultivator," but back in the '50s, when my generation was growing up, most of the fathers worked all day, and the mothers stayed at home with the kids. The "quantity time" full-time mothers devoted to their children back then gave them an edge in the "developmental" department, taking young blobs of highly energetic clay and molding them into children acceptable to society.

Today, the experts have devised the phrase "quality time" to allow all the working mothers (and fathers) to feel less guilty about the length of time their work keeps them from their children. It's not the amount of time spent with the children, they suggest, it's the nature of the activities shared during that period. As a working father, I hope the experts are correct.

As the quote at the beginning of this article suggests, a mother's pride can be a potent motivational force. If all the accomplishments in my life had been as noteworthy as my mother thought they had been, it's a miracle I'm not president by now. Most of us take pride in realizing goals in our personal life and career, but to have someone else admire those accomplishments is an undeniable pleasure.

Currently, there is an intangible aspect of personal satisfaction that's not present anymore after completion of a task or recognition for some achievement. It doesn't seem quite as important somehow; time will no doubt change that perception. Other family members and friends can show pride in one's accomplishments, but there's no pride like that of a mother's.

An older colleague of mine, in an attempt to console me shortly after my mother's death, said he knew I missed her. His parents had been dead for quite a while and he still thought about them "all the time."

Time. My mother had very little time for herself raising five children. And later in her life, with volunteer work for the museum, Scouts and crocheting clothes and toys for the grandchildren, she still didn't take much time for herself.

With my youngest brother graduating from high school this year, however, and their dwelling in Sweetwater paid off, my mother and stepfather were about to take some time for themselves and renovate their old house.

"We thought we had all the time in the world," my stepdad said to me the day of my mother's funeral. "But we didn't. It's just not fair." She had ordered carpet the week before she entered the hospital, and that's all she talked about before she went to sleep for the last time. It took months before I could think of that injustice in her life without becoming angry.

The value of lost time has suddenly become priceless. College kept me away for years. After completing my education, I moved farther away, both emotionally and geographically. I always thought there would be plenty of time later to be with my mother. And that appeared to be the case, when, almost four years ago, my wife and I moved to Abilene and I saw her more and more frequently. She was only 40 minutes away.

The distance between us may have been great during my college years, but there was always a bond, an enigmatic connection that existed between us. She would surprise me with her almost psychic awareness of any trauma that cropped up in my life during that time.

Whether it was a low point caused by an emotional breakup with a girlfriend, three finals in one day or a physical injury of some sort, she would call, as if my distress had set off that long-distance, maternal alarm of hers. "What's the matter?" she would always ask. And I would tell her.

One instance elicited a call that was almost scary in its timing. One day while working at a fast food restaurant, I was down in the basement catching cases of supplies that another worker shoved down a two-piece ramp of plywood that covered the stairs. Somehow, the bottom piece of plywood jutted above the top at one point during the operation. A 75-pound box of cans snagged on the board, promptly became airborne, did a complete somersault and smacked me right between the eyes.

An hour later, after acquiring a couple of stitches and shaking the cobwebs out of my head, I returned to my apartment just as the telephone rang. "What's the matter? Are you all right?" And I told her.

In 1980, New Yorker Toby Talbot wrote, "A Book About My Mother," a poignant memorial to her own mother who had died at the age of 74. Her grief was overwhelming, and she spent 180 pages trying to make any sense of her loss.

One sentence from the book sticks out in my mind: "I never truly believed she would ever die." I'm no expert, but I would think that that sentiment is widespread, and not just about mothers, but fathers, sons, daughters, all those we love ... even ourselves. And a shocking, untimely loss of a loved one seems even less in the realm of possibility.

I'm comforted a bit by the final words I said to my mother. They were "I love you." The last thing she said to me was "I love you, too. Be careful." She believed that those words were the last you should say to anyone you cared about, even if he or she were only going to the grocery store and back. I believe that, too. Now, even more.

And like Talbot, I always will be grateful to my mother because, as I grew older, she accepted the fact that there was a smaller world within our one large sphere of family existence: mine. Different psychological, philosophical and emotional requirements existed in both worlds.

She realized those distinctions, and raised me accordingly, even though the real world in which she grew up as a child drastically differed from the one into which she bore me. As diverse as those settings were, she remembered the universal discomforts of youth she had experienced, and was endowed with an incredible amount of patience because of it.

Raising a child is a formidable task, especially in a quickly mutating environment where values change every year, much less every generation. With the example of my mother before me, I hope never to forget those lessons of parental responsibility she subconsciously instilled in me.

I thought there would be numerous Mother's Days down the road. There are and there aren't. My mother's mother is still alive; my son's mother, too. And my wife's mother. I'll make those count; I'll have no more regrets about wasted time.

This holiday is significant and natural for all those millions of people who enjoy their relationships with their mothers. And for those who need an excuse to go see their mothers or give them a call, it is the little push they need. This is a day to tell one of the most important people in you life that you love her, to share a part of your life with her. For some people, such an opportunity would be a godsend.

I'd even settle for another phone call in my dreams.