Read Chicken Soup for Every Mom's Soul Online
Authors: Jack Canfield
Linda Ellerbee
T
he time is always ripe to do right.
Martin Luther King Jr.
My daughter, Carey, was never really like other children. She began talking in sentences by the time she was a year old. She was extremely inquisitive and always too mature for her age. She excelled scholastically and showed signs of musical talent at an early age. She was inducted into our state’s program for gifted and talented children and was invited to be a violinist in the local Youth Symphony. Awards for outstanding achievement in academics and music lined the bookcase in her bedroom. Her stepfather and I couldn’t have been more proud.
Then, slowly and dramatically, everything changed. Carey’s appearance changed. She started running around with a new group of “friends.” She dropped out of the symphony and sports. Truancy notices and reports of her absences from school became commonplace. She became sullen, withdrawn, belligerent and, at times, violent. She scoffed at any form of discipline, crept out of the house in the middle of the night, and often stayed out all night. She ran away from home three times. Carey had discovered drugs.
I fretted, worried, and spent many sleepless nights anticipating a call from local police telling me she was in jail or, worse yet, dead. I lamented over the things I must have done wrong in raising this child and wondered what had become of the moral and emotional foundation I thought I had provided her. Little did I know that this was just the beginning of the end of my dream of a “normal” family with a perfect life.
Over the next two years, my primary goal was to “fix” Carey. I asked a police friend to “scare” some sense into her. I arranged a private “tour” for her of the juvenile detention center. I put her into private counseling. Last, but not least, we moved away from the city, away from the bad influences. Carey loves horses, so we bought three, one for each of us, thinking that if we shared her interest as a family her problems would get better. It was a good plan and it did work . . . for a while. Before long, it all started again.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, my husband confessed that he was seeing someone. We separated on Memorial Day weekend. I’m not sure how I made it through the first few months. I was scared and lost. I couldn’t sleep, forgot to eat, worked twelve-hour days between two hours’ driving time, and did my best to keep up with three horses, two dogs, fifteen cats, three acres of yard work and normal household chores. As you might guess, Carey’s contribution was, at best, minimal. I felt hopeless.
Then came Christmas. I had always loved Christmas, a time that would bring back sweet memories of childhood surprises, family truces and special traditions. But this year there was nothing to celebrate, no reason to even drag out the Christmas decorations.
On Christmas Eve, I worked until noon. If I could have, I probably would have worked right through to the new year. The hour drive seemed longer as I imagined my cold, empty house . . . very much like my heart. I pulled into the drive, reluctantly got out of the car, obligingly petted the dogs and grudgingly walked toward the back door. Suddenly a sweet aroma wafted toward me, beckoning me forward. As I opened the door, a potpourri of tantalizing scents enveloped me. I first identified the smell of food . . . not ordinary, quick-fix food, but festive, only-on-holiday food. Then I recognized the sweet smell of scented holiday candles. If my nose was merely delighted, my eyes were in awe! This house I was entering had been transformed from the drafty, colorless old farmhouse I had left behind that morning into a warm and glowing Christmas fantasy, a joy to all my senses! Soft Christmas music playing on the stereo relocated from Carey’s upstairs bedroom gently competed for my attention to the holiday décor as I floated through each neatly groomed room. When I reached the living room, Carey was sitting in her holiday finery, complete with an apron and a childlike smile I remembered from long ago but hadn’t seen in several years. She said, “Sit down and relax. Christmas dinner will be ready soon.”
I’m not sure what I said to her then to let her know how much I appreciated what she had done, but no words could have adequately described the way I felt. I just sat and allowed the sights, sounds and smells to fill my senses . . . and my heart. Over Cornish game hens stuffed with cranberry-orange dressing, homemade sweet potatoes (not from a can), rice pilaf and creamy chocolate pudding, we laughed as we talked of Christmases passed.
Lying in bed that night, I thanked God for giving me my daughter. The daughter whom I thought I had lost had just blessed me with the most wonderful gift I have ever received: a much-needed reminder of the true spirit of Christmas . . . love and hope.
Luann Warner
It was late November. We wandered the mall, shopping with the multitudes during the pre-Christmas rush. My two little ones and my mum moseyed along, taking in the holiday gala.
Then I spotted them, a pair of pink high-top sneakers.
I delighted in their pastel cockiness, gentle pale pink on aggressive high-tops. I had found my Christmas present. “That’s what I want Mum, those sneakers,” I said.
She looked at me as if I had lost my mind. I am sure she had expected me to suggest a cashmere sweater for Christmas, but instead I had found an inexpensive but delightful bit of fun.
A week later, when I returned from a conference in Washington, D.C., the pain in my lower back was unbearable. I went to the hospital, underwent some tests and was admitted. Surgery was scheduled for the next day.
No big
deal,
I thought.
Take out three discs, be home in four days, a few
weeks off. We’ll manage.
Something went wrong.
I vaguely remember waking in the recovery room screaming in pain. I remember my mother sitting beside my bed and saying her rosary. In a stupor, I could only begin to imagine what character-building events lay ahead.
While I lay in the hospital, my husband, Tom, had to shop and wrap. My father visited faithfully every day and watered my miniature Christmas tree. Two days before Christmas, with much pleading, I was released from the hospital and taken home heavily sedated, bent at forty-five degrees on a walker.
The words from the day before kept ringing through my head. My husband was sitting nearby, incredulous. The surgeon, my nemesis, chart in hand, spoke. His words were crisp, clear and delivered unemotionally: “You will never walk unassisted again. But with therapy, we can help straighten you some, and with time the pain will gradually subside until it can be managed.”
Who is he talking to? He can’t mean me.
All I kept thinking was,
I have two young children. I’m only 31 years old. Of course
I’ll walk upright again.
At home I felt as if I were in a fog shrouded in pain. The tree was up. Presents were piled beneath it. I was laid in a recliner on an egg crate mattress. The recliner accommodated the bend in my body. The codeine and other drugs helped block the overwhelming pain and fear.
On Christmas morning, Mum and Dad came for breakfast. As the gifts were being opened, Mum said, “Tom, you did a fine job. Everything looks lovely.” I noticed the sparkle of the paper. Looking closer, I saw that everything was wrapped in “Happy Hanukkah” paper. I couldn’t laugh. It hurt to just turn my head. Poor Tom, he’d tried. But the paper—what a kick. Our Hanukkah Christmas is still a wonderful memory.
The little ones helped me open my gifts. And there they were, a pair of pink high-tops; I’d forgotten all about them.
I started to weep, loving them yet wondering whether I would ever be able to wear them. I wept uncontrollably. The kids didn’t have a clue what was wrong. Tom rushed them to the kitchen for blueberry pancakes, the annual Christmas fare. My mother, unflappable as always, just looked at me without as much as a question and said, “You’ll wear them.”
Three weeks later, my beloved dad died unexpectedly— another bad dream—and I was back in the hospital for the first of the many tests and hospitalizations to follow. I was put into traction and finally a full-body cast, and slowly I worked my way back to some semblance of an upright position.
At first, I was bent at the waist, face to the floor. I wore weights on my ankles and a body cast. I moved on a walker. There were no high heels, no fancy dresses. There were only sweat clothes to fit over the body hardware, but my feet were dressed in pretty pink. Everywhere I went I wore my pink high-tops. For the first year, they were truly all I saw when attempting to learn to walk again.
It took three full years of pain, perseverance, faith in God and a deliberate belief in myself. It took family support, but I learned to walk and endure and to stand tall. I finally had to part with the worn and cracked pink high-tops. They were tossed reluctantly. Oddly enough, they had been a part of a time in my life I didn’t want to forget.
Time went full circle, and I moved into my mother’s home to tend to her during her last few years. On the eve of my mother’s death, before she slipped into a morphine-induced sleep she said to me, “How lucky I was to have had my family and to have shared yours.” She dozed momentarily. When she woke, while stroking my hand, she quietly said, “We had a special relationship. You are not average, Dotty. Don’t ever forget. You are extraordinary. Always stand tall, just as if you’re wearing your pink feet.” She said little else that night as I sat by her side and remembered every nuance of our lives together.
Now when I put the pink angel on the top of the tree, I always stretch tall and straight and remember that terrifying Christmas and the faith and love evident in my mother’s gift to me. It was a basic message, one of courage and strength, emblazoned in a simple pair of pink high-tops.
Dorothy Raymond Gilchrest
W
e do not get over grief.
But over time, we do learn to live
with the loss.
We learn to live a different life . . .
with our loss.
Kenneth J. Doka
Many say their most painful moments are saying goodbye to those they love. After watching Cheryl, my daughter-in-law, through the six long months her mother suffered toward death, I think the most painful moments can be in the waiting to say good-bye.
Cheryl made the two-hour trip over and over to be with her mother. They spent the long afternoons praying, soothing, comforting and retelling their shared memories.
As her mother’s pain intensified and more medication was needed to ease her into sedation, Cheryl sat for hours of silent vigil by her mother’s bed.
Each time she kissed her mother before leaving, her mother would tear up and say, “I’m sorry you drove so far and sat for so long, and I didn’t even wake up to talk with you.”
Cheryl would tell her not to worry, it didn’t matter; still her mother felt she had let her down and apologized at each good-bye until the day Cheryl found a way to give her mother the same reassurance her mother had given to her so many times.
“Mom, do you remember when I made the high-school basketball team?” Cheryl’s mother nodded. “You’d drive so far and sit for so long, and I never even left the bench to play. You waited for me after every game and each time I felt bad and apologized to you for wasting your time.” Cheryl gently took her mother’s hand.
“Do you remember what you would say to me?”
“I would say I didn’t come to see you play, I came to see you.”
“And you meant those words, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I really did.”
“Well, now I say the same words to you. I didn’t come to see you talk, I came to see you.”
Her mother understood and smiled as she floated back into sleep.
Their afternoons together passed quietly into days, weeks and months. Their love filled the spaces between their words. To the last day they ministered to each other in the stillness, love given and received just by seeing each other.
A love so strong that, even in this deepened silence that followed their last good-bye, Cheryl can still hear her mother’s love.
Cynthia M. Hamond
A few days ago I stood outside an intensive care unit, a stranger looking in, and saw my mother for the first time in five years. I watched as she lay there so helpless and fragile and tried to remember what had made us turn our backs on thirty-three years of love. Later, when I was sure she wouldn’t know, I went to her bedside and touched her hand. Even after five years I could have picked that hand out of a thousand. I have felt the love in her hands so many times . . . when they brought me out of emergency surgery, she laid her hand on my cheek and I knew in that instant, without opening my eyes, that she was there. I knew that everything would be okay. When my father was dying, Mama’s hands reached across his bed and gave me the strength to face what lay ahead. Mama’s hands were always there to nudge me when I hesitated and to catch me when I fell. Of all the hands in the world, I knew hers. There was a lifetime of love and strength and giving in those hands. To feel Mama’s hands reach for me just one more time and to give back to her all that she had given to me, would calm the storm that raged in my heart.
My mother had suffered a massive aneurysm. She was semi-conscious and could not speak. On the night before she was to have surgery, she indicated she would see me. As I approached the bed, I was so afraid of hurting her, but I had to connect with her just one more time. Standing by her bed holding her hand, I believe she knew it was me by her side. She squeezed my hand tightly, and tried to sit up as if she were reaching for me. When she lay back, a single tear escaped and slid down her cheek, bearing silent witness to all that we had lost.