Sunday Sabbath December 20 2015  A MOTHER’S LOVE

Well, my day happened.  Like I said yesterday, I cannot speak out loud of having something finished because then there is always something that comes along to take up that time.  Well, I was right.  It happened today.  Dave drives to church on Sunday mornings so I go through my iPhone emails and dump about a hundred or more on the way to service.  Then before we arrive at church I shut my phone down so it will not ring during the service.  So I did that this morning.  Later while the pastor was preaching something told me my phone was going to ring but I thought naw…it is turned off.  And just as the service was ending and the pastor getting into the quite stage talking about salvation and prayer time, my phone does ring, very loudly.  I immediately grabbed it out of my bag and turned it off but not before I saw on the screen that is was from one of the hospitals of which I am on call.  When a baby dies I am called to take photos for the family if they would like me to come. 

First of all, I couldn’t believe my phone rang and when I saw who it was I thought, well, I guess I was supposed to get that call.  I left service, went to the hallway and returned the call.  Yes, I was needed as soon as possible.  I knew that I was supposed to go because otherwise why would my phone ring when I had purposely turned it off?  Dave and I left at the first amen out a side door and bypassed a lot of people traffic and parking lot back up.  I was at the hospital a little over an hour later.  The call came at 10:00 a.m., I was at the hospital by 11:15 a.m. and finished at approximately 12:50 p.m..  Came home, ate lunch and burrowed myself in the post production work from the mornings session and came back upstairs at about 7:45 p.m..  So there went my day. 

Sometimes it is unbearable to my heart to see the sorrow and sadness and shock that the grieving parents display.  This death was so unexpected and blindsided the family.  At times it is all I can do to keep my composure.  I will admit, sometimes I cry.  Here it is Christmas time and the sorrow of their loss may very well haunt them each Christmas season for the rest of their lives.  God gives me strength to do what I do, otherwise I could not bear it.  I was told that they would be having a funeral and the DVD I make is usually shown at the service.  It is done.  That is a good feeling.

Often I wake up in the morning somehow knowing I will be called in to the hospital to do a photo session.  When that happens I even change certain things around in my day perchance the call comes I will be ready.  Sometimes I mention it to Dave and almost every time it has come to pass.  I had an inkling knowing I would receive a call during church.  My thought was that, that “knowledge” that came to me was so I would remember to turn my phone back on and check my messages.  I guess that was not good enough.  I needed to go immediately.  Now I am spent.  Literally, SPENT.  I looked up the word “spent” and there was a list of definitions so long that it is no wonder I feel like I do.  Here are a few of the synonyms:  “consumed, expended, used up, finished, overdone, completed, at an end, exhausted, tired, useless, depleted, worn out, washed up, bushed, whacked, and run through!  Whew!  It makes me tired just reading the list of how SPENT I AM!

A MOTHER’S LOVE

By Kathleen Martens

December 20, 2015

A mother’s love

Born in child

Sweet and simple

Strong yet mild.

A dear little life

Meant to live

But died too soon

No breath to give.

Grief overwhelming

Within a soul

A babe in arms

Her hopeful goal.

But not to be

For death has come

For her sweet

Little one.

I hope my poem is not too melancholy.  I usually write some sort of poem after I deal with a family who has had a loss.  It is the way my heart expresses itself and it helps me cope.  No matter what the poems say, they are all quite sad.

Uh Oh!  More poem is coming:

(continued from above poem)

The angels came and beckoned,

“Little one come home.

It is not your lot in life,

This old earth to roam.

There is a place made for you

And a Father who calls your name.

Your days upon the earth

Wil not harbor fame.

There is a reason you were born

And though you may never know,

The lessons learned because of you

To others it will show.

The road is not always easy

To those left behind

But the purpose of your life

Others will certainly find.

One thing you should know

A mother’s love is forever,

Part of you tucked inside.

In her heart forever tethered.

I consider the above just one poem with a few of my thoughts inserted in between.  I actually thought I was finished when I started sharing my thoughts.

A short little story comes to mind.  Years before I was born my mother gave birth to her second son.  From what I understood her baby boy was born about two months early, in the outback of Arkansas.  Home grown midwives prevailed and there were really no hospitals accessible.  There was also no way to get there even if one was accessible.  Also, there was no money to pay for a doctor.  Well, little Wilfred was born at home.  I think he lived a short while and then died.  Many years later I was on a trip to southern Arkansas with my mother and she wanted me to go a certain way so she could show me where my brother was buried.  Where we drove was just desolate.  There were no structures around for miles, no houses or towns.  I can’t imagine what it must have been like in the 1930’s.  We finally come to a corner of sorts with a barbed wire fence separating the road from the pasture.  I could see where there might have been an old cemetery but it was very rundown and I could not make out any headstones.  As we drove very slowly past a stretch of fence, she had me pull over and stop.  She studied the landscape a bit and pointed to a couple of old posts that looked like they were going to fall down.  She then told me that he was buried by one of the posts right in that area.  The ground was overgrown, weeds grew higher than my knees (or maybe it was grazing fodder) and I couldn’t differentiate one post from another.  She turned to me and said, “Your heart never stops grieving when you bury a child and I can’t even remember his middle name.”  Not remembering his middle name really disturbed her. 

My mother only gave birth to two sons.  She went on later to have five daughters.  At the time we visited the grave area of Wilfred she had already buried her oldest son.  He lived to be 46 years old.  The words she said in the car on the way to his funeral haunted me even more than the words she told me at Wilfred’s graveside.  My brother’s death was very tragic.  My mother was distraught.  She turned to her daughters in the car and said “How sad it is to know that the world is a better place without your son living in it.”  Is it possible for a mother’s heart to know more pain than knowing that?

I hope I don’t open a can of worms with my family when I share these little stories, but they are true as to how I remember them.  Sometimes certain things just cause me to think about other certain things and the one way I deal with them is to write them out.  I am sad that my mother had to suffer the heartache that she suffered but I do not carry the pain with me.  God has taken that pain from me, but I was not the mother.  Who can know a mothers love?  Who can know a mother’s pain?

If your mother is still living and you haven’t told her you love her in a while, do so now.  Do not wait for that one day in May when you MIGHT REMEMBER to send her card.  Let her know you love her now.  And moms, if you have kids out there, especially grown ones, remember to tell them often just how much you love them.  My mother did not know how to say “I love you”.  But you know what?  I taught her how to say it.  And it took a long time.  Now that is another story entirely!  For later.

Now, if you can get past this blog, here at Christmas time to boot, go out and spread some good cheer.  I really am a very tired, but happy person.  I can work and work and work and very rarely ever get tired.  But give me the kind of emotional drain of today and it will sap me more than a day’s worth of hard labor.

Oops!  I promised short blogs.  Tomorrow I will do so.

Good night and God bless you!  TELL SOMEONE EVERY DAY THAT YOU LOVE THEM!  AND MEAN IT!