A Note On A Mother's Passing

A dear childhood friend of mine's mother passed away the other day. I hadn't seen her in over 40 years but, having grown up as the kid across the street, she has never been absent from my memory.

Thinking about this woman, a homemaker with three boys and a working husband, I was struck by how much sociological change has occurred in the American home in the course of those 4 decades. She was of an era when the mother's task was to raise the children and maintain the home. It fell to the mother to ensure the kids did well at school. It fell to the mother to ensure the kids practiced good citizenship. It fell to the mother to ensure the kids grew up to be productive adults. It fell to the mother to ensure the kids grew to adulthood reflecting well on the home from which they had come.

My friend's mom, like my own, was really dealt a rotten card when it came to timing. The 60's and 70's turned out to be a time when a social epidemic swept the nation, when conformity, heritage, and tradition fell off the mantles of homes throughout the country. The passing on of religion, social mores, and politics, all the hallmarks of successful and productive childrearing disappeared in less than a generation. For many women, what they had hoped for and expected never became part of the generation they had raised. For many women, my mother and my friend's mother included, it was a grave disappointment, a second wave of postpartum depression. Some never adapted, never recovered a sense of place, of personal esteem.

Living as we do in a era of dual incomes, rapidly receding gender-specific roles, and a social landscape with limited boundaries, it's hard to understand what these women stood for. It's hard to understand the valor and validity of a life dedicated to ensuring your children not only did well but did the family proud as well. It's hard to understand how a woman could be satisfied living to see her hopes and dreams fulfilled in the lives of others. Selflessness receives so little play these days.

With the passing of my friend's mother I am reminded of just how lucky some of us are to have been raised by mother's who-- while they may have seemed at times overbearing and intrusive-- never wanted anything more than for their children to grow into substantial adults. It wasn't about happiness. It wasn't about wealth. It was about success in the truest sense-- success as productive members of society-- theirs and ours.