"Treasures for Mom" 

While rearranging some things and throwing away some others, my wife Lori, saw an old family Bible. “What’s this?” she asked. I explained that it’s a family Bible of a couple of generations. She eagerly opened it and began thumbing through the old, worn pages. “What’s this?” she asked again. It was an old card. I investigated. 

As I examined it, the card touched my heart for two reasons. It was a Mother’s Day card from my brother, Doug, and me. Just seeing my brother’s little-boy handwriting pulled at my heartstrings. I thought of his short life and the suddenness of his untimely death. The other reason that card touched me was the date it was given, Mother’s Day, 1961. That would have been the last Mother’s Day card we gave Mom together. 

The only other item in that Bible was a piece of worn-out school paper, now brown with age. It looked like it was straight out of the old Big Chief tablet. “Will you be my Valentine?” it asked. It was addressed to “Mom” and dated 1961 as well. It was signed, "Doug". 

Some treasures a Mom just can’t let go. Those items had been in that Bible for forty-five years. I’d had that Bible several years and didn’t know they were in there. Some treasures are like that, aren’t they? We tuck them away in a Bible, or a drawer, or hidden place. They’re too painful to carry all the time and too precious to release. So we hold on. There is something in that hidden treasure that helps to heal or at least soothe. 

And, it doesn’t have to be a card, or piece of paper, or something material. It can be that memory of a baby’s first step or first ride on a bicycle.  It could be the first day at school or maybe the child’s baptism. Those memories are not in themselves painful. They are perhaps poignant only as we pull them up, recognizing that a child is no longer there with us in the way as before. They are growing up too fast or already grown up and gone. And a Mom carries a certain amount of pain in those beautiful treasures. It’s a healing pain. So we hold onto memories and the papers and cards and whatnots that evoke those memories as ways of dealing with the reality of change, as sudden and unannounced as that change can be. 

Think about that this Mother’s Day. The treasures she holds are sometimes hidden. But they are there nonetheless. And the best we can do is give the gifts of love and appreciation that lasts forever.

David (age 5) with brother, Doug (right)