Eye rolls frequently escaped my baby blues at the time but I guess that's what happens when you don't realize what you've got until it's gone.
My mom died in February of this year.
She was right. She won't always be there and her saying that made me realize at a very tender age that I need to be independent. I can't expect somebody else to deal with my issues. I've got to take responsibility for things that happen to me.
This past summer my siblings and I got together to go through the old farmhouse. Box by box. Bag by bag. Book by book. Childhood memories came flooding over me as I found old pictures, jewelry boxes, clothes and dusty books. I wasn't surprised that she kept everything ever given to her. There were hundreds of birthday cards, mother's day cards and letters. She appreciated every single one. They were all in pristine condition too!
I used to tell mom to throw stuff away that she didn't use anymore but she insisted on keeping it...... although she was always willing to give it to somebody who'd appreciate it. Several years ago she started giving me a few things from the deepest corners of her house. She knew she wasn't going to live forever and she had this big ol' farmhouse full of stuff. I would go for a visit to Manitoba and come back home with the back of my truck filled with old china, beautiful old kitchen ware and daintily crocheted doilies. I kept what I could but she would be disappointed with me if she found out what just wasn't salvageable and had to be thrown out! Sorry Mom!
Anna Harder, originally from a small town in southern Saskatchewan, was somebody I wished I'd known better. She was a great help to her mother and spent most of her young life helping at home with household duties. At the young age of 19 she was married off.
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| Here's my beautiful Mom at 18 years old with her mother and her twin niece & nephew. She adored them! |
Mom didn't talk about her young self very much. I don't think she was hiding anything, she just didn't say much about it. I guess it was another life to her or maybe she just didn't think anyone would be interested.
I only found a few pictures of young mom in the old photo box. In every one, she's got her lovely smile. I imagine talking to 18 year-old Anna and asking about her hopes and dreams. Surely she wasn't planning on having six babies and staying home to raise them all?...and working endless hours making meals, darning socks and doing yard work? Or maybe she did.
In all my years on this earth, I never heard Mom say "I should've stayed in school and become a _____" or "I feel like travelling somewhere". She never complained about carrying armfuls of chopped wood or buckets of coal across the big farm yard in the wee hours of a Manitoba winter.
She said "It needs to be done".
Whenever I pull up a picture of Mom in my head, I always see her smiling or at the very least, a smirk.....as if she had a private thought running through her head and wasn't about to give it up.
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| This is how I remember Mom. Still beautiful. |
It was a lot, I repeat, a LOT of work going through her belongings but a part of me is relieved that she didn't throw stuff out easily. Even though most of the "junk" (sorry Mom) got tossed into the dump, at least we were able to take one last look at it.
