This Mother’s Day finds me a motherless child as well as a mother who has lost a child. My mother died suddenly two weeks ago – the same day the Neural Health project was launched and all the surrounding publicity had pulled my grief over Jordan to the surface again. Fresh grief on that still raw grief has made for a challenging few weeks.

 My mother was such a strong woman; shaped, as we all are, by the circumstances of her childhood.

 She was born the youngest of six children at the end of the Dirty Thirties and raised on the homestead at Richlea SK – all that remains now of that small town is a plaque on a stone. My grandfather voluntarily went off to fight the Great War leaving my grandmother alone to manage the farm and feed and raise those little children.

It’s hard to think about Mother’s Day and not think about my mom’s mom who lost three of her own children. One son died at 16 – his car went into a slough and he drowned. Her older boy Alec would eventually die in Alaska after years of what I now see was likely mental illness and addiction issues. She lost another son when he was only 2 after he fell into a well and drowned. My aunt remembers my grandmother holding and rocking him in the rocking chair – it would be two days before she allowed someone to take her baby from her. Oh my, how those losses would have changed her, shaped her, and shaped my own mom.

There were periods as my mom grew up when they lived in town – including a stint living over the Post Office. My mother had a lifelong fear of fire – after a fire in one of the homes they lived in resulted in her having to climb out of a window and leap off the roof into her brother’s arms.

She married young, and the last of her three girls was born when she was 26. Five years later, faced with her youngest heading to school in the fall, she herself went back to school – joining the second class of the new nursing program at Kelsey Campus SIAST. It was a different time then – weight restrictions on applicants, and the only time you could wear slacks to school was if you were in one of those polyester pant suits so popular in the seventies. The picture of my mother in her white uniform, nursing cap and the dozen red roses graduates were given, held a place of honor in our house.

Mom joined the staff at City Hospital – when the hospital was literally owned by the City of Saskatoon. There was no union at the time – no such thing as vacation time or pregnancy leave. I remember the summer my older sister was turning 14 and preparing for high school and my mom asked for some time off. When it was denied she resigned – and we spent that entire amazing summer at the cabin. My mom became a founding member of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses and served on the local SUN executive. I will never forget how appalled she was when I went to work at InterContinental Packers the summer after grade 12 and made more money per hour packaging bacon then she did saving lives.

The year Jordan was born my mom traded her career as a Critical Care float pool nurse for Northern Nursing. I don’t think she had any idea what she was getting into. Her first trip north she accepted a three week contract – and quickly contacted my Dad begging him to send fresh fruit and vegetables, books, and crossword puzzles on the bus to Pelican Narrows. When that long drive to Pelican Narrows on lonely winter roads became too much of a worry for my Dad, she started accepting contracts at McLean Lake. She was treated so well there and loved the years she spent serving as the mine’s Occupational Health nurse. Although after years as a critical care nurse and then providing emergency services to the northern reserves, she often admitted to feeling “a little bored”.

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She was a proud Grandmother of six and recently saw the birth of her second great grandchild.

She had a wicked sense of humor and a wonderful laugh. The day after her unsuccessful surgery to remove her lung tumor, when her very handsome surgeon came to deliver the news at her bedside, she looked up at him and said with a straight face “Are you sure I have lung cancer?” He started to stutter a reply (he had just explained in great detail how the tumor was wrapped around her vena cava and inoperable) and she said again “But are you sure I have lung cancer? Because honestly, I feel no urge to run across Canada”. Mom and I howled. The surgeon looked gob smacked.

She was stubborn and single minded. Her last night, when she lay on a stretcher in emergency, weak and struggling to breathe, her doctor came out of her room to talk to me and told me that Mrs. Lowe had stated in no uncertain terms that she was NOT spending the night here – so give her some meds and get on with getting her home.

No one expected the pulmonary embolus that would suddenly take her life the next morning. But that doesn’t alleviate the guilt and regret that haunts me about not spending the night with her. Nor does it keep me from punishing myself for not having gotten to the hospital even 30 minutes earlier so I could have heard her voice one more time or looked into her eyes and see her looking back.

Greg, Lucas and the dog headed to the cabin on Thursday so for the second weekend since her death I find myself alone in the house. Yesterday when I got home I felt a presence. It’s hard to describe; things looked altered, shifted slightly. Shadows would flit as I walked into a room. And I was filled with the certainty that it was mom. It was gone this morning when I woke – I imagine that with my great-nephew finally home from NICU today that Mom has slipped over the mountains to watch over him.

And that is a good reminder to me – that even though Mother’s Day is bittersweet for the childless, motherless, and newly bereaved, there are still mothers and children in my life to be celebrated. Like this handsome young man – who brings joy and sunshine to our lives on a daily basis.

“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” ―Anne Lamott