Still Yet To Be Done

As I was setting up the Nativity in my front yard this year, I looked down at the Virgin cradling her infant son in her arms. She had been holding that little boy in her arms for over two thousand years in millions of homes, churches, and stores, in daylight and darkness, snowfall and rain. Even in just a light-up plastic rendition, her love for her son was still apparent.

It brought me back to the day before when my husband had been talking to his ailing mother. She told him she had been having dreams of her own mother trying to find her. We have known his mom has been waning for quite awhile, but as we saw with my grandmother, and with other friends who watched their elderly parents slip away, when long deceased loved ones start visiting, the clock is nearing midnight.

We sat together a few moments and talked over each friend we could remember passing and who they called out to in the end. And of all the deceased loved ones that came to help in the journey home, whether they be husbands or children or sisters or friends, the one that never failed to be present was their own mother. She never failed to show up at the end.

Having had enough sadness for the time, my husband patted me on the back and chuckled. He told me that in all my harried days of mothering, making sure pony tails were combed, shirts were ironed, homework was done, checkbooks were emptied, that even after my death, my mother’s job would still not be done. I shook my head and headed for the washroom to put in another load of laundry, and although no more toys littered the floor, he was right. I had a day of Senior meetings, clarinet lessons, and college schedules to go over. The children were bigger in size, but that only made my tasks grow at the same rate and to never be done.

And my husband’s words were so true. After all, wasn’t it my own mother that I always seek out when life gets too heavy. No matter what crazy idea she may be tackling as she gets older in years, it is her that I look to when I need the advice or the comfort that only a mother can give. I watch her grieve for her own mother when each holiday passes, as my children reach each milestone that she knew my grandmother would have liked to have seen. I feel her mother still with us as I spread each Christmas tablecloth and my mother walks in with traditional foods that are prepared each year just as her mother had for her own Christmas table each year long ago.

And then one day as my son was bemoaning teenaged problems in love, my 90 year old father grabbed my shoulders and pushed me in front of the young man. He told him to take a good look at the woman standing before him, because no matter what women passed through his life, no one on earth would ever love him as much as the woman standing in front of him now. I was startled at how next to my quiet, soft spoken father, I could tangibly feel the woman he still loved. The one who’s smile he had not seen in over 40 long years. The one who had first held her newborn son nearly a century ago, but who was still so alive in his heart no matter how much time had passed by.

I looked down at the top of my son’s bent head, and knew how my father’s words were so true. That as mothers we look at our children and know they represent unlimited hope. That no one is as special or who’s destiny so potent as those little hearts that we guide. We would move heaven and earth for their happiness, and as their mothers we will be constant and present no matter how many years pass.

While I leaned down to wipe a year’s worth of dust off the kneeling plastic version of Mary, I knew that for centuries she had still been mothering her baby. It was for him that she had spent forever never tiring of comforting the sick and the lonely, inspiring the faithful, and appearing as a beacon of light for the desperate. And she was still kneeling in my yard for one more Christmas season watching over her son. Because of her love for her child, after two thousand years, her job is still yet to be done.